Top Retailers

SAN FRANCISCO — UC-San Francisco and Walgreens on Tuesday opened a Walgreens store on the UCSF campus that aims to improve medication safety, decrease healthcare costs and help patients use medicines more effectively by offering pharmacist-based patient care and expanded health-and-wellness services to the community. A joint effort among Walgreens, the UCSF School of Pharmacy and UCSF Medical Center, “Walgreens at UCSF” also will explore new models for improving overall patient care.

NEW YORK — New Albertsons is on its way to becoming more than 1,300 stores larger. Cerberus Capital Management is the lead bidder for Safeway, according to a Bloomberg report published Saturday that cited people with knowledge of the matter. 

Cerberus is the only firm willing to swallow Safeway whole, the paper reported. 

ORLANDO, Fla. — CommonWell Health Alliance, the health information technology vendor-led interoperability effort, announced on Monday that CVS Caremark has joined as one of the newest contributing members of the organization.

CVS Caremark joins founding members Allscripts, Athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, Greenway, McKesson and Sunquest and service provider RelayHealth in the Alliance's work.
 

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Sam's Club has named David Badeen VP health care. Badeen will be responsible for pharmacy, OTC, optical and hearing centers, as well as third party contracting and pricing. In this new role, he will report directly to Jill Turner-Mitchael, SVP health and wellness.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — CVS Caremark’s MinuteClinic has announced that it is switching from its own proprietary electronic medical record solution to Epic’s EpicCare system.

"EpicCare's rich platform will allow us to continue to provide the highest quality of care and advance our services through a robust, world class EMR," said Andrew Sussman, president of MinuteClinic and SVP/associate chief medical officer of CVS Caremark.

DETROIT — The Detroit Lions and Walgreens earlier this week teamed up to tackle the flu in Detroit Public Schools. On Feb. 25 Walgreens, the official health and wellness partner of the Detroit Lions, will give Detroit Lions Academy students flu immunizations.

Students who choose to get flu immunizations will have the opportunity to participate in a Playworks recess session that includes special guest Detroit Lions running back Joique Bell.

Families — parents and siblings — of students are also welcome to receive complimentary flu immunizations.

TAMPA, Fla. — Not Your Mother’s hair care is starting off the year with a bang as it adds more than 10,000 new U.S. retail locations and nearly doubles its SKU count for 2014.

The brand has expanded from approximately 15,000 U.S. retail locations to more than 25,000 in the first quarter of 2014.   

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Fresh and pharmacy is the key to smaller-box retailing, Walmart reported Thursday as it announced plans to increase its capital investment in smaller formats from 120 to 150 new stores for the fiscal year to between 270 and 300.