CVS, Walgreens Stress Face-To-Face Care Amazon Doesn’t Yet Have

While Amazon’s entrance into pharmacy captivates customers and Wall Street, brick-and-mortar rivals Walgreens and CVS Health are stressing their face-to-face connections to patients.

Walgreens is testing myriad partnerships and this summer launched a digital marketplace that links its customers to medical care providers and their prices beyond services inside the drugstores. And CVS Health is touting its relationships with medical care providers and the potential to add more services once its acquisition of the health insurance giant Aetna is completed in the coming weeks.

Without mentioning Amazon by name, the strategies unfolding at CVS, Walgreens and Walmart are designed to stress the patient connection beyond the ability to order something online and have it delivered overnight or within hours.

“With a physical presence in almost every community across the country, we have the unique ability to meet patients where they are and provide the care and services they need either face to face or with the unique set of virtual and physical delivery service capabilities that extends our physical presence in real time to meet their needs,” CVS Health CEO Larry Merlo told analysts earlier this month on the company’s second quarter earnings call. “You see, it’s not simply about selling products. It’s about delivering quality care and driving superior outcomes, both of which require expertise that our clients and members have come to trust.”

CVS operates more than 1,100 MinuteClinics staffed by nurse practitioners and isn’t ruling out offering more services at its more than 9,800 drugstore once its deal with Aetna is completed. CVS, like Walgreens, has relationships with medical care providers in the communities it serves and Walmart is reportedly discussing a partnership with the health insurer Humana, which has been gobbling outpatient care sites across the country. These local ties are what CVS and Walgreens view as key to the move away from fee-for-service medicine to value-based models that measure health outcomes and ensure medical care is delivered in the right place, in the right amount and at the right time.

So far, Amazon bought the small online pharmacy PillPack in June and earlier this year launched its Basic Care brand of over-the-counter medicines. And Amazon is working with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. on improving healthcare for 1 million employees.

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