Retail clinic pioneer Peter Miller to leave Take Care Health Systems

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. With a solid team in place and the strong support of parent company Walgreens, Peter Miller, Take Care Health Systems co-founder, president and CEO, once again is letting his entrepreneurial spirit fly and is preparing to embark on a new journey. Drug Store News has learned that Miller will be leaving Take Care Health Systems at the end of May to pursue a new entrepreneurial venture.

“Miller’s deep passion and enthusiasm for Take Care Health and the retail clinic model remain unchanged and he will continue to be a strong supporter and advocate for innovative healthcare solutions in conjunction with the industry, which he helped found,” Take Care Health Systems said in a statement sent to Drug Store News.

Peter Hotz, Walgreens divisional VP and Take Care Health Systems executive, will provide leadership for the businesses within the Health and Wellness division, including the Take Care Clinics. Hotz will work collaboratively with the Take Care Clinic executive team and will continue to lead employer driven assets at Take Care Health.

Hotz will continue to report to Hal Rosenbluth, SVP of Walgreens and president of the health and wellness division.

Since partnering with Rosenbluth to form Take Care Health Systems in 2004, Miller has led the development and launch of nearly 360 Take Care Clinics, as well as creating a company centered around nurse practitioners as front-line providers and redefining the healthcare experience for patients. In turn, Miller’s efforts have helped millions of patients access high quality, convenient and affordable care. Walgreens acquired Take Care in May 2007.

Miller’s laidback style combined with his keen business sense, enthusiasm and innovative mindset has helped catapult Take Care into what could be classified as a retail clinic powerhouse.

“Our approach was to say, ‘What is the problem?’ And the problem in primary healthcare is a supply and demand issue,” said Miller in an earlier interview with Drug Store News. During a 15-year career with Johnson & Johnson, Miller led multibillion-dollar global health care companies. His professional experience also includes serving as president of a $3 billion pharmaceutical company and formerly worldwide president of a $400 million consumer health care company.

Eager to tackle the healthcare debacle, Miller met with his friend Rosenbluth and they decided to do something about it.

With a concept in mind, Miller and Rosenbluth began their research, which involved driving around in Rosenbluth’s truck and “crashing nurse practitioner conferences” to interview them about their jobs and the healthcare industry.

The solution? Build a low-cost system that utilizes a nurse practitioner versus a physician as 70% of the cost of running a clinic is staffing. Enter Take Care Health Systems.

Take Care has — and continues to — change the landscape of the U.S. healthcare one nurse practitioner at a time.

“We built a system built entirely around the patient with a very strong focus on delighting our colleagues so they, in turn, can delight patients,” Miller told Drug Store News in recent interview.

As reported earlier this year by Drug Store News, Take Care recently engaged Gallup Consulting, a leading management consulting firm, to collect and analyze patient engagement data. While most convenient care clinics measure patient satisfaction, Take Care wanted to take it even further to measure not only satisfaction with their services and the interaction with the nurse practitioner or physician assistant, but also wanted to articulate and illustrate engagement levels to better know its patients. The results were quite impressive.

Take Care received the highest satisfaction ratings from more than 9-out-of-10 customers. Compare this with the typical company in Gallup’s database, which received the highest ratings of satisfaction rating from just 1-out-of-3 customers.

Take Care customer engagement results that had been collected landed in the top 10% of all organizations that Gallup has measured customer engagement for since 2003. To put this in context, the typical company in Gallup’s database strongly engages less than 1-out-of-5 customers. Take Care, according to Gallup, strongly engages more than 3-out-of-4 customers.

There’s no doubt that satisfaction is vital but being able to truly engage the patient is paramount. Having patients who are strongly emotionally attached and attitudinally loyal — in other words engaged — drives patient visits. If a patient is delighted with a company’s service they will tell friends and family.

“People would say to me, ‘How are you guys going to differentiate from your competition?’ And I said, ‘We have something called our secret sauce,’ said Miller in an earlier interview with Drug Store News. “It is the culture that we built here.”

Clearly, Miller’s passion and keen business sense has helped Take Care achieve its success and shape that culture into what it is today.

“Walgreens and Take Care Health Systems are grateful for Peter Miller’s leadership and passion and wish him the best on his new endeavors,” the company stated.