Content about Special Reports

At press time, the industry was weighing the potential merger of pharmacy benefit manager rivals Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions, but executives at CVS Caremark remain more confident than ever that its PBM business is ideally positioned to “effectively compete,” regardless of what federal trade regulators decide for ESI-Medco. And there’s good reason why.


Over the years, CVS Caremark has grown from a go-getting New England-based regional player to a nearly $100 billion pharmacy healthcare giant known for its vertically integrated pharmacy-PBM model via the 2007 acquisition of Caremark, its highly successful loyalty card program and its innovative beauty concepts.


Helena Foulkes, one of the brightest, fastest-rising stars of the retail pharmacy industry for more than a decade, earlier this year assumed the newly created position of EVP and chief healthcare strategy and marketing officer.



When Rite Aid chairman Mary Sammons accepted the Sheldon W. Fantle Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores’ Annual Meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., in May, it was the culmination of a career that had seen Rite Aid emerge from a period of darkness that had lasted more than a decade.


Sammons plans to stay on as chairman of Camp Hill, Pa.-based Rite Aid until the company’s annual meeting in June 2012. But when she does hang up the gloves, she will have a lot to look back on.



Since its nationwide launch in April 2010, Rite Aid’s wellness+ loyalty card program rapidly has proven itself to be a phenomenal boost to the chain’s business as the first-ever loyalty program designed to enhance customers’ savings and well-being together.


A&P may be a supermarket chain, but judging by its string of new health-and-wellness initiatives and strong emphasis on pharmacy, one could argue that it really is a pharmacy with a grocery store wrapped around it.


Through A&P’s network of 200 pharmacies and 605 pharmacists, the company is aggressively looking for ways to improve the health and well-being of its shoppers. And that includes improving medication adherence. 


Pharmacy retailers always are looking for ways to leverage the resources they have in order to attract customers, whether they’re drug stores, supermarkets or mass merchandisers. One supermarket operator is using its gas stations to bring customers to the counter.


Bartell Drugs, a family-owned regional chain since 1890, has still got it. The chain has brought together health and personal care by sponsoring health and beauty events, the first of which happened in October 2010 and featured health screenings, cosmetic demonstrations and hairstyling tips. Another event is scheduled for the fall.


The brand-new Fresh Health Prescription Plan from Brookshire Grocery was rolled out on March 10. It’s a comprehensive prescription plan that shoppers in the chain’s new Fresh by Brookshire’s store, which opened in March 2010, can purchase for a $10 membership fee. 


“The program covers generic and brand prescriptions at very competitive pricing compared to what they’d pay with insurance and third-party plans,” said Jim Cousineau, Brookshire SVP pharmacy operations.


Many analysts have voiced concern that despite numerous indications of a slow, but healthy, economic recovery in the United States, growth in the number of jobs has lagged, even as it has exceeded economists’ expectations.


But another indicator that the economy is picking up speed is U.S. sales growth at Costco Wholesale, the members-only mass merchandiser based in Issaquah, Wash. For fiscal 2010, sales at the company’s 424 U.S. stores — which the company officially calls warehouses — were $59.6 billion, compared with $56.5 billion in 2009.



The pharmacies of tomorrow are expected to be more service-oriented, and Discount Drug Mart is preparing to be exactly that: a comprehensive pharmacy point of care. 


“We are really marketing pharmacy more now than we have in the past,” noted Tom McConnell, Discount Drug Mart VP and CFO. For every month since an October 2010 implementation of the pharmacy-focused marketing, and a $1.99 generic drug program covering 50 generics, Discount Drug Mart has been realizing comparable-prescription gains, he said. 


Regional player Fruth Pharmacy is re-
energizing its business. “We are entering our 59th year of business and trying to continue to provide that small-town, quality customer service while staying competitive and on the cutting edge with all of the programs that are out there on the pharmacy side,” said Lynne Fruth, chairman and newly appointed Fruth president.