To those who have come to know and admire Greg Wasson, the just-announced Walgreens acquisition of Duane Reade comes as no surprise. Indeed, in the year that has passed since Wasson was named chief executive officer of the Walgreen Co., he has thrown off surprises and excitement like a pinwheel.
Here are seven events guaranteed to be resolved, debated, dismissed or disregarded in the chain drug industry over the course of 2010. 1.
The political landscape that retail pharmacy advocates will have to traverse has grown considerably more complex in recent weeks with the surprising victory of Republican Scott Brown in the race for the Senate seat that had been held by Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, for 47 years, and t
Like most successful business executives, Tom Ryan is ambivalent about praise.
The sale of most of the assets of Snyders Drug Stores to Walgreens and the planned closure of the balance of the corporately owned outlets in the chain once again brings to the fore the difficulties regional operators confront in an era when the community pharmacy business is national in scope and a
Chain drug retailing has changed dramatically in the first decade of the 21st century. Nowhere have those changes been more evident than in the character and content of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.
The new year promises to be pivotal for retail pharmacy, with internal and external factors coalescing to shape the profession’s future direction.
The year that just ended has seen the Walgreen Co. transform itself more suddenly, dramatically and, to some observers, inexplicably than any mass retailer in the industry’s annals. Go back to the last months of 2007. Walgreens was hardly a focus of undue industry attention.
For four days at the beginning of December, NACDS brought the chain drug industry briefly to life, by the simple expedient of gathering the retailer and supplier communities together in New York City for a series of business and social events.
Retail pharmacy operators and other health care providers recently were given a preview of the difficulties involved in implementing the findings of comparative effectiveness research, a science-based approach to evaluating the benefits and potential dangers of alternative forms of diagnosis and tre
With 2009 winding down, the time has come to list the most memorable events of the year in chain drug retailing. Herewith, seven such events: • The remaking of Walgreens.
The day before the Senate leadership unveiled an $848 billion bill that will be the focal point of the next phase of the health care reform debate, all of the members of Congress received a timely reminder about the importance of including measures to improve medication compliance in whatever legisl
The most significant development in chain drug retailing this year has been its willingness, finally, to begin to unleash the power of the pharmacist and the pharmacy that supports him.
Duane Reade, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2010, is a fixture on the retail scene in New York City.
The first registration materials for the 2010 National Association of Chain Drug Stores Annual Meeting came in the mail last week.
Tom Ryan brings his customary concentration of thought and clarity of purpose to the issue of health care reform in an op-ed piece that recently appeared in The Washington Times.
