Walgreens: Leveraging assets via collaboration

4/14/2017

Walgreens Boots Alliance in the past year has implemented “a new way of thinking” across the upper echelons of the company. “We’re focused on working in partnership to provide a better, more efficient and more effective approach [to health care] within the United States,” Stefano Pessina, executive vice chairman and CEO, Walgreens Boots Alliance, told shareholders earlier in the year.


Health care in the United States is a juxtaposition of interests — significantly improve access and quality to care and, at the same time, reduce costs, Pessina said. It’s providing more for less, and that’s best accomplished through collaborative partnerships.


In the past year, the Deerfield, Ill.-based retailer negotiated a number of strategic broad-scale partnerships, ranging from deals that serve the patients of several leading pharmacy benefit managers across the country and collaborative relationships with healthcare providers to arrangements with more of a customer-centric appeal with companies like FedEx.


“Around this theme of partnerships, we’ve taken a very different approach in terms of the market,” Richard Ashworth, president, pharmacy and retail operations, Walgreens, told Drug Store News. The common thread across many of Walgreens Boots Alliance’s recent partnerships is leverage; each of the collaborations leverage massive patient populations with the significant clinical reach and pharmaceutical buying power of Walgreens Boots Alliance, all in an effort to drive better health outcomes with greater cost efficiency.


Walgreens’ partnership with UnitedHealthcare on a co-branded 2017 Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription drug plan is a perfect example, Ashworth said. “[The AARP MedicareRx Walgreens, or PDP, plan] really focused on a lower cost Part D plan, and within that there are some really good innovations for care and services for our patients,” he said. Its low $22.50 premium is one of the lowest in the country this year, according to the two companies — the plan targets cost-conscious consumers looking to maximize the affordability of their Part D coverage. Collectively, UnitedHealthcare reaches 4.8 million seniors through its Medicare plans, according to Drug Channels Institute.


Other examples include Walgreens’ deals with UnitedHealthcare’s OptumRx and Rite Aid’s PBM EnvisionRx. Through these partnerships, Walgreens makes 90-day refills available at stores for the more than 1 billion prescriptions managed between the two PBMs. That collaboration delivers clients and members enrolled in the program an integrated pharmacy-care offering that produces higher treatment-adherence rates and better patient outcomes through patient choice. “We’ve done a lot of outcome-based work and clinical interventions in coordination with OptumRx and EnvisionRx,” Ashworth said. “It’s really focused on helping to deliver better patient outcomes, as well as cost savings, which [benefit] health plans and employers.


Walgreens also is partnered with Express Scripts. “[We’re] really thinking about the types of programs we can develop that leverage the size and scale of Walgreens, along with their size and scale, to bring more value to the community,” Ashworth said, such as the Department of Defense. Express Scripts added Walgreens to the pharmacy network servicing TRICARE in December 2016.



TRICARE serves 9.5 million patients all told, including active military service members, retirees and their families. TRICARE’s 2015 net spending was $9.2 billion, of which $3.1 billion, or 34%, came from retail pharmacy spending, according to Drug Channels Institute.


Walgreens’ collaboration with Prime Therapeutics is “… creating a new model, quite frankly,” Ashworth said. “It puts pharmacy, the PBM and the health plan all in one coordinated patient care and outcomes-driven network.”


Through a special joint venture, Walgreens and Prime Therapeutics created a new company that combines the central specialty pharmacy and mail-service businesses of each organization. “Putting them together in a new joint venture is a great testament to our approach to the market as it relates to partnership,” Ashworth said. Prime Therapeutics serves 20 Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans with just more than 22 million members — including 1-of-every-6 people covered through the public exchanges.


Meanwhile, on the provider front, Ashworth noted, Walgreens has established important regional partnerships with health systems, including Providence Health, Advocate Health Care, SSM Health and the University of Miami Health System to operate retail clinics located within Walgreens’ stores. “What I like about these [partnerships] is that they’re hyperlocal,” Ashworth said. “This is about the dispensing and provider community coming together and co-locating those facilities with pharmacy, creating a very powerful customer and patient proposition where you’re able to get your medical needs, pharmaceutical needs and over-the-counter needs taken care of all together in one shop.”


Beyond PBM and provider partnerships, retail-driven partnerships are helping improve the overall customer experience, Ashworth added, such as its deal with FedEx, where Walgreens locations will serve as FedEx pick-up and drop-off points. Walgreens and FedEx expect to have the program available at thousands of Walgreens’ locations later this calendar year and chain-wide at its 8,100-plus locations by the fall of 2018. FedEx delivers approximately 12 million packages every business day through one of 5,000 existing touchpoints.



Expanding clinical capabilities

Walgreens also has expanded its clinical capabilities in the past year, particularly in travel health vaccinations and specialty pharmacy. Walgreens recently designated more than 50 of its local specialty pharmacies, branded “Community, a Walgreens Pharmacy,” as cancer-specialized locations. Walgreens cancer-specialized pharmacies help patients access, afford and stay on their medication, while also helping to successfully transition them into survivorship care.


As all of this has unfolded, Walgreens Boots Alliance has remained committed to closing its proposed acquisition of Rite Aid, which, if successful, will bolster the chain’s reach across the continental United States by at least 3,400 stores. That larger store base means the partnerships Walgreens has forged with PBMs will be multiplied across a larger pharmacy network.


The company also has ramped up its corporate social responsibility efforts. “We’re really connected to championing everyone’s right to live ‘happy and healthy,’” Ashworth said. Walgreens Boots Alliance was recognized last year with the United Nations Foundation’s Global Leadership Award, in part for its highly impactful “Get a shot. Give a shot.” initiative, which has provided some 15 million vaccines to children in developing countries. The award also acknowledged the company’s continued sponsorship of Red Nose Day, which raised more than $20 million in 2016 — doubling the amount raised the year prior — and its partnership with Vitamin Angels, which has provided 100 million children and mothers with essential vitamins and supplements since June 2014.


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