In a previous blog note, I reported that CVS was launching a new type of retail health facility in Houston called a HealthHUB (see: CVS Expands Its Healthcare Presence with Its New HealthHUB Stores). The first store has now opened in Houston and was discussed in detail in a recent article (see: CVS Wants to Make Your Drugstore Your Doctor). These facilities are designed to offer a greatly expanded set of health services including wellness. Below is an excerpt from the Fortune article. It's very long so I can cover only a portion of it.
[CVS] CEO Larry Merlo is working to transform CVS into a wellness pioneer—far from its origins as a drugstore.Today the master plan is to combine Aetna’s claims data and analytics that identify which of its 22 million members are at risk for, say, developing diabetes or cardiac disease (see: CVS Health Completes Acquisition of Aetna, Marking the Start of Transforming the Consumer Health Experience), with CVS’s capacity to guide them to testing and treatment before the disease progresses, at the pharmacies and HealthHUBs. That formula is targeted to generate big savings by curbing readmissions to hospitals and getting patients to adhere to their drug regimens....[Part of the plan consist of] recruiting CVS’s biggest customers, mostly other insurers, to adopt a fresh model that gives CVS a share of the potentially giant savings to come from counseling and screenings at their corner clinics that keep patients out of operating and emergency rooms....
[I]n a May 1 conference call in which CVS announced better-than-expected results, Merlo discussed plans to make HealthHUBs the cornerstone of the new CVS..... [The company] operates 9,900 drugstores, standing in a virtual tie with Walgreens as the nation’s largest drugstore owner....The new CVS is focusing on where the money is: managing chronic conditions. Between 50% and 60% of all adults suffer from one or more of the top five: diabetes, hypertension, cardiac disease, depression, and asthma. Those conditions account for 80% of America’s $3.5 trillion in annual health care spending. The new model’s Rx is to hand Aetna’s data on every detail of its members’ health—including hospitalizations, lab tests, and doctors’ diagnoses—to the pharmacists and wellness specialists who encounter those folks in person far more often than anyone else in their health care orbit.
Stay tuned as to whether CVS and its CEO Larry Merlo can execute this grand strategy. On the face of it, this seems to be the company's new health model: (1) numerous convenient locations; (2) the analytics capability of a large health insurance company; (3) an emphasis on wellness; (4) an emphasis on the treatment of chronic diseases which some health systems treat piecemeal using multiple specialists and often without coordination. I don't think that most of the large health systems can or will be able to respond to this CVS challenge in a coordinated way. Most of them have engaged in only a half-hearted way to wellness (see: New National Patient Survey Reveals 84% Would Increase Provider Loyalty with More Holistic Health and Wellbeing Support).
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