Table of Contents
DEERFIELD, Ill. — Walgreen Co. is restructuring its health care divisions in a bid to more effectively sell its pharmacy and wellness services to employers, managed care organizations, pharmacy benefit managers and government clients.
“Simply put, we are integrating Walgreens 70,000 health care providers, on the front lines of health care across the organization, with a unified sales team offering pharmacy, health and wellness solutions for the benefit of our payer clients and their patients,” said Walgreens president and chief executive officer Greg Wasson.
“In the past several years, Walgreens has developed a broad set of quality, affordable and accessible pharmacy, health and wellness services unmatched in our industry. We are now aligning these services across the entire company, enabling us to provide services to payers as a single, seamless integrated solution.”
Walgreens’ core pharmacy division, which is led by executive vice president Kermit Crawford, will now take responsibility for specialty pharmacy, infusion pharmacy, mail service pharmacy, medical campus pharmacies, long-term care pharmacy and home care services. Those services previously were part of the Walgreens Health Services division.
Joe Terrion, currently chief client officer responsible for the company’s Health and Wellness Division sales and client services organization, will now lead the combined “pharmacy, health and wellness solutions” sales and client services organization.
Terrion will continue to report to Hal Rosenbluth, Walgreens senior vice president and president of the Health and Wellness Division.
Also continuing to report to Rosenbluth will be Peter Hotz, Walgreens vice president and president of the company’s Take Care Health Employer Solutions group, who will assume responsibility for the WHS pharmacy benefit solutions group, Walgreens Health Initiatives Inc.
“Kermit and Hal will bring together all our pharmacy, health and wellness services and take them to the marketplace as a single, robust integrated offering,” said Wasson.
“Kermit’s 27 years of experience and strong leadership at Walgreens will ensure that we provide premier service, cohesively and comprehensively, across our full range of pharmacy operations. And Hal’s strength and decades of experience in leading business-to-business sales and service organizations will enable us to meet or exceed our clients’ expectations for integrated pharmacy, health and wellness solutions.”
The restructuring is meant to allow Walgreens to offer health services clients the ability to reach patients through more than 8,000 points of care.
The company says its integrated offering includes pharmacy services (with more than 7,100 retail drug stores, over 100 medical campus pharmacies, specialty and infusion pharmacy services, mail service pharmacy and long-term care pharmacy); preventive health and wellness services (including retail and work-site health centers and immunization services, home medical equipment and supplies, respiratory services and chronic care management); and pharmacy benefit administrative services (including integrated reporting and outcomes analysis).
The move also is expected to generate increased efficiencies across Walgreens’ pharmacy, health and wellness operations, as well as provide savings in overhead as some overlapping functions are consolidated.
In announcing the restructuring, Walgreens also said that Stanley Blaylock, president of Walgreens Health Services, plans to leave the company in April after a transition period. Blaylock was a co-founder and CEO of Medmark Specialty Pharmacy Solutions before that company was acquired by Walgreens in 2006. He intends to pursue new entrepreneurial opportunities in health care.
“Walgreens has been fortunate to have Stan’s leadership and industry experience at a time when we greatly expanded our specialty and home care businesses,” Wasson said. “He helped to nurture and grow these businesses with a relentless client focus into mature entities, where they can now be fully integrated into our pharmacy operations. We thank Stan for all he did through his vision, his ingenuity and his drive to position our company for the future.”
Walgreens’ various health care initiatives recently won the company recognition from Fast Company magazine, which named the chain one of the nation’s most innovative health care companies. The publication cited Walgreens’ network of Take Care Clinics in select stores and its efforts in health and wellness services and chronic care management as evidence of the company’s leadership in the field.
“To be recognized for our innovation in health care is especially gratifying,” commented Walgreens chief innovation officer Colin Watts.
