The plan calls for opening hundreds of primary care clinics, shaking up its selection of front-of-store merchandise and taking a stake in several health care companies. (Photo: Ken Wolter/Shutterstock)
Walgreens Boots Alliance, the holding company that owns the Walgreens drug store chain, is creating a new division called Walgreens Health.
The announcement came at an Oct. 14 virtual investor day during which Roz Brewer, the new chief executive officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, said the company's nearly 9,000 stores in the United States will become a health care hub for its customers — complete with hosting doctor appointments and testing for such infections as pneumonia, strep and HIV.
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She called the increased emphasis on health care the company's "new growth engine."
"This new Walgreens Health will make a difference and will [begin] to transform us away from retail and just dispensing pharmaceuticals," she said in an interview with CNBC. "It will be about the lives that we manage, and the lives that we touch, and the lives that we can wrap physician[s] and clinicians around in our buildings, both physically and digitally."
According to CNBC:
- The plan calls for opening hundreds of primary care clinics, shaking up its selection of front-of-store merchandise and taking a stake in several health care companies.
- Walgreens said it will have 85 primary-care clinics in stores by the end of the year. They will be under the name Village Medical at Walgreens. It plans to have at least 600 of the doctor offices in more than 30 U.S. markets by 2025 and 1,000 by 2027. More than half of them will be in parts of the country that are medically underserved.
- In some stores and online, it will add Walgreens Health Corners. The in-store spaces will be staffed by medical professionals, such as nurses and pharmacists, who can consult with patients and help them manage chronic conditions.
- So far, Walgreens has opened 40 of them. It plans to have more than 100 by the end of this fiscal year and to ultimately have more than 3,000 across its stores.
Brian Tanquilut, an equity research analyst for financial services company Jefferies, put on his health care hat and told CNBC that the strategy makes sense.
"[Walgreens] is making the pharmacy a health center," he said. "Instead of having a retail focus, the driver of value is no longer driving [prescriptions] out of the pharmacy. It's actually delivering care and making the patient loyal to the store."
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