David Joyner, CEO of CVS (CVS), has ambitious plans to improve the company's retail healthcare business and create a more integrated system of health professionals.
Joyner said his goal, telling Yahoo Finance, is that by leveraging what he considers a large labor pool, CVS will have a major impact on the health of the entire community he serves.
“I'll see 30,000 pharmacists employed at CVS retail, pair it with one of the biggest labor forces of nurses around Minute Clinic and add Oak Street… doctors on top. “It's been a huge amount of care. Delivery model in this country,” he said.
Minute Clinic is CVS' in-store medical services available in more than 800 locations. This includes rapid testing such as vaccine administration and influenza and other respiratory virus testing. Oak Street is a primary care service for seniors that was acquired by CVS in 2023 for $10.6 billion.
The idea of unifying all medical professionals is borrowed from other large healthcare institutions, including the competitor United Group (UNH), which currently employs 10% of US doctors under the Optum brand. . However, unlike United, which acquired traditional physician practices, CVS focuses on expanding its retail health footprint.
Growth is a similar strategy to other retail pharmacies, as well as closing nearly 900 stores in areas where CVS is performing poorly.
For example, Walmart (WMT) folded its retail medical clinic last year, and Walgreens (WBA) announced plans to sell its service provider Villagemd this year.
In this environment, Joyner believes CVS is suitable for building more retail health products. He explained that the view is shared by Tim Wentworth, CEO of competitor Walgreens, as pharmacists are not utilised based on medical knowledge. Joyner believes that he will be able to better apply his pharmacist skills and receive payments through a variety of reimbursement models.
He used vaccine dosage amounts during the pandemic as an example that allowed pharmacists to “practice at the top of their licensing.”
“Because today's pharmacists are essentially paying back drug margins, they claim… they've been somewhat commoditized at the expense of truly valuable, very frequent healthcare services,” Joyner said. I said that.
“In the end, with the lack of primary care in this country, my goal is to continue to raise the role of pharmacies and communities, and that will be supplemented with micro-clinical services that add primary care delivery. And ultimately, they will eventually move all the way to a value-based care model,” Joyner said.
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