As their clinics take off, Walgreens and Walmart are investing more in specialty pharmacies

As Walgreens and Walmart scale back their investments in medically-staffed health clinics, they are making headway in the lucrative specialty pharmacy business.

Walmart Tuesday said it will close its 51 Walmart Health Centers in five states and Walmart Health Virtual Care, which is the retailer’s telehealth business. Instead, Walmart will step up its efforts in pharmacy and specialty pharmacy.

While we will no longer operate health centers, we will take what we have learned as we provide trusted health and wellness services nationwide through our nearly 4,600 pharmacies and more than 3,000 vision centers, Walmart said. in a blog post announcing the end of their Walmart. Walmart Health and Virtual Care Businesses. For 40 years, we have provided these high-quality, accessible and affordable points of care that are part of their respective communities.

Specialty pharmacies are an increasingly important player in the US health care system given the flood of expensive biotechnology-derived drugs on the market. These medications are more complicated than the pills and capsules you pick up at the corner pharmacy and often require specialized administration, refrigeration, packaging and patient instructions.

Last week, Walgreens announced plans to launch Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy, a $24 billion business that integrates a new pharmacy equipped to handle gene and cell therapies with its existing pharmacy assets, including the large specialty pharmacy and the home delivery business, AllianceRx.

Walgreens’ move, which will take effect Aug. 1 when AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy becomes Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy, comes as Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth works to engineer a financial turnaround focused on providing more health care services to stores while strengthening the most lucrative aspects of pharmacy. Under Wentworth, Walgreens has dramatically scaled back the opening of medically staffed retail clinics with its partner VillageMD and is instead investing in more lucrative pharmacies, specialty pharmacies and other services.

Americans, their health insurers and employers are now spending more on specialty drugs than on pills, capsules and tablets. Specialty drugs account for 1% to 2% of a typical employer’s total prescription volume, but these drugs account for roughly 50% of a pharmacy’s total annual spending, according to employee benefits consultancy Mercer.

Meanwhile, prescription costs are driving up the overall costs of employer-based health insurance coverage thanks to new specialty drugs like the weight-loss drug Ozempic and similar injectable specialty drugs. Weight-loss prescriptions Wegovy, Rybelsus, and Saxenda, along with the diabetes drug Ozempic, which is often used off-label for weight loss, drive employers’ health costs up by more than $300 per insured worker, according to data released last fall by benefits consultancy Aon.

This week, representatives from Walgreens, Walmart, CVS Health and Amazon are among the specialty pharmacy executives who gathered in Las Vegas on the 20th.^th Asambia AXS24 annual conference, which brought together more than 8,000 attendees. Asambia executives said the meeting has grown from the original two dozen attendees who attended our first summit.

Over the past few years, the importance of pharmacies has continued to grow and we have expanded the clinical capabilities of the services we offer, Walmarts blog post said. We continue to provide immunizations and have grown to offer testing and treatment services, access to specialty pharmacy medications and care, as well as other essential services such as medication therapy management and a variety of health screenings. With more than 4,000 of our stores in areas of medical provider shortages, our pharmacies are often the front door to healthcare.