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Inside This Issue - News
As health care reform gets deeper into the implementation phase, pharmacy advocates have mixed feelings about how the new dynamics will impact community pharmacies and the companies that supply them. Because of a dedication to health care that is unmatched by almost any other retailer in North America, the pharmacy management team at Kerr Drug has been chosen by the editors of Chain Drug Review as the collective recipients of this year’s Chain Drug Pharmacy Executives of the Year award for 2010. With 2011 now here, chain drug retailers across North America are encountering many of the same challenges that they did a year ago. Super-Pharm, Israel’s largest, and the world’s most internationally focused, drug chain, is Chain Drug Review’s Global Chain Drug Retailer of the Year for 2010. Mark Panzer, president and chief executive officer of Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy, has been named Chain Drug Review’s Merchant of the Year for 2010. One man was integral to possibly the most dramatic two-year transformation in the history of chain drug retailing. The second grasped its import early on and helped find a way to turn it to his company’s advantage. The third is making sure its benefits endure. A last-minute shopping surge turned a disappointing holiday selling season into an acceptable one for America’s chain drug retailers, as customers crowded into the nation’s chain drug stores during the three days before Christmas to buy many of the holiday items they had repeatedly deferred or postponed. It appears unlikely that Hank Mullany will join CVS/pharmacy. Cardinal Health Inc. has announced the early renewal of its distribution agreement with Walgreen Co. to supply pharmaceuticals to its more than 7,600 retail pharmacies across the country. Adults receiving prescription coverage under Washington state’s Medicaid program could lose that benefit if lawmakers do not find a way to trim the state’s budget shortfall when they reconvene later this month. Walgreen Co. and the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) have joined forces to provide flu vaccinations to hundreds of thousands of people who may not otherwise be able to afford them. Lewis Drugs has debuted its “store of the future” here, a 40,000-square-foot unit with an upscale decor, diverse consumables and general merchandise, and even a climate-controlled Four Seasons garden wing with a retractable roof. Last month’s ruling by a federal judge in Virginia that part of the health care reform law is unconstitutional and hints from another judge in Florida that he may issue a similar decision have set the stage for a long legal battle. A relative newcomer to the community pharmacy world has challenged the industry to take a different tack in addressing the issues confronting it. The UnitedHealthcare segment of UnitedHealth Group has added five retail chains to its program that provides Medicare Part D beneficiaries enrolled in the company’s plan with savings on the prescriptions they fill at the chains’ pharmacies. McKesson Corp. has appointed Brian Tyler as president of its McKesson U.S. Pharmaceutical unit.
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