NACDS 2025 Live: A Conversation with Walgreens Chief Pharmacy Officer Rick Gates

At the 2025 NACDS Annual meeting, DSN sat down for a conversation with Rick Gates, chief pharmacy officer of Walgreens and the incoming chair of NACDS.

Gates outlined the priorities for NACDS under his tenure, talked about what’s next for community pharmacy and patient access and the role that health and wellness will play in pharmacy's future?

In the end, Gates told us, retail pharmacies will need to modernize and invest in things like central fill services, use of digital tools like AI and other types to create efficiencies in our stores "to make it easier for our pharmacists to have that impact and that one-on-one touch with our patients. Driving change is something you're going to hear a lot of because we've got to not just sit back on dispensing as a core what we do. We all have to invest and lean into really changing that environment to what we're doing."

Watch the full video above.