Content about Drug Fix

A study of 900 women by Siempre Mujer magazine, a Spanish-language publication that covers beauty, fashion and lifestyles for Latinas, found that Latinas prefer details in beauty products, follow a multipronged beauty regimen and tend to outspend women in the general population when it comes to beauty, with more than 52% spending $25 or more per visit. In other words, Latinas represent a significant opportunity for retailers and beauty manufacturers.

Giving the growth of the Hispanic market and the rising buying power, it is important that retailers and manufacturers understand how to effectively connect with this beauty shopper.

CVS Caremark reported strong numbers on both the retail and PBM sides of its business — but the real bombshell for analysts on the call was the news that the company has raised its estimate on the number of Express Script patients that CVS feels it can keep from going back to Walgreens.

That's a big boast. But Rite Aid, too, likes its shot to keep the ESI customers who at one time frequented Walgreens' pharmacies to fill their prescriptions. And Walgreens, for its part, reminds analysts that there was a reason those ESI patients were filling their prescriptions in the first place. So the Chicago retailer is confident that they'll be able to entice many of their former patients to return to the pharmacy fold. But in the end, who's really going to capture that coveted ESI patient? Will they stay, or will they go?

Given the extent of the meningitis outbreak linked to a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts, new regulations for such pharmacies might be a good idea, but how to implement them remains uncertain.

(THE NEWS: Meningitis outbreak linked to compounding pharmacy spawns new proposed legislation. Click here to read the story.)

The message is getting louder and gaining traction: Nurse practitioners are highly skilled health care professionals who need to be able to practice to the full scope of their ability, especially in light of the primary care shortage that is plaguing the nation.

(THE NEWS: Survey: Health insurers show advances in NP credentialing, reimbursement. Click here for the full story.)

Omni-channel retailing is so yesterday. Omni-national retailing is the space where Walgreens is looking to play, and this magazine is just one of the first examples of how retailing concepts from the Old Country will be imported from across the Pond and translated for the U.S. market.

(THE NEWS: Walgreens launches new biannual magazine showcasing private label, Balance Rewards deals. For the full story, click here.)

In today's give-'em-what-they-want style of merchandising, in a market where savvy, omni-channel consumers can customize the what, when and where of the purchase, private label more and more ascends from being considered the cheapest product offering to being the best value product offering.

News flash: Retailers get the idea that attracting today's consumer means going multichannel.

Although 77% of general shoppers compare store brands to brand names, 90% of women compare both regularly, according to a shopper behavior study conducted by The Integer Group and M/A/R/C Research that was published Thursday in The Checkout.

With shoppers looking for ways to buy things more conveniently, it's clear that the age of the multichannel consumer is well under way, and retailers would be wise to respond in kind. Many of them have already done so.

According to retail consulting firm Upstream Commerce, convenience ranks at the top of reasons why consumers shop online, and as recent news has shown, this is just as true for supermarkets as it is for anyone else.

WellTransitions could be couched as another way in which Walgreens is striving to create solutions that lower the cost of overall health care outside of the physical retail pharmacy space, because it is. WellTransitions also could be characterized as a program that will routinely chip away at the $25 billion associated with hospital re-admissions by having more prescriptions filled at the pharmacy counter, because it does. But the real impact of this news? The real clincher? Hospitals need retail pharmacy if they're going to focus on reducing re-admissions, eliminating unnecessary healthcare costs and avoiding those penalties.

And that's the direction Walgreens is headed. Most recently, the company added managed care vet Brad Fluegel as chief strategy officer, adding another talented expert to Walgreens chief Greg Wasson’s dream team, which he has described as the “perfect blend of internal, long-term talent” and “external expertise and talents” that is helping to accelerate a massive transformation in its business. (For exclusive coverage of all Walgreens' efforts, click here for the Sept. 24 DSN special report.)

American Well, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina and Walgreens' Take Care Health Systems have collaborated to make telehealth services available to thousands of BCBSNC employees located throughout North Carolina.