DSN Industry Issues Summit: Why shoppers need pharmacy now more than ever

The second panel at the 24th annual event highlighted what shoppers are demanding and how retailers and technology companies are responding

By Sandy Levy

The panel, “The Price of Staying Healthy,” moderated by Nimesh Jhaveri, president of community pharmacy and health at McKesson, featured top executives from retailers and technology companies sharing how they are responding to customers’ needs.

Panelists included Kevin Host, senior vice president of pharmacy at Walmart; Dain Rusk, vice president of pharmacy at Publix Pharmacy; Leon Nevers, business development, procurement, supply chain director at H-E-B; Brad Ulrich, group vice president at Walgreens; Jeff Key, president of PioneerRx; Alecia Lashier, chief automation officer at iA; and Valerie Mondelli, executive vice president, healthcare and chief commercial officer at RevSpring.

Jhaveri opened the discussion asking, “How can retail pharmacy improve the patient experience going forward?”

Host said that pharmacy has been on the forefront implementing technologies for many years, including doing simple things like real time claims adjudication. “Fast forward to today. We have an omnichannel connection with patients, through apps and texts,” Host said. “Ninety percent of America is within 10 miles of a Walmart and 140 million people shop at a Walmart every week. Those folks are not just there for TVs and groceries, but for health care as well.”

As Walmart builds out clinics, Host said, it is placing trained community health workers into those sites, to act as navigators. This enables Walmart to address social determinants of health, such as food insecurity, transportation and housing. “They know where resources are and can help our patients get connected to them,” Host said.

Walmart also provides affordable options, such as ReliOn insulin, and its $4 generics program. “Walmart has been founded on the mission to help people stretch dollars and to help them live more affordably. Pharmacy is another example of that for Walmart,” Host said.

Rusk noted that retail pharmacy has evolved. “It’s about creating a single integrated experience, a health and wellness destination and creating convenience. When people have to wait to be seen, it becomes out of sight, out of mind. With employers passing costs on to employees, value-based care is the best outcome at the cheapest cost. At Publix we want to help the consumer get what they want, where they want it and when they want it.”

On the topic of software platforms that enable pharmacy personnel to be more efficient, Lashier said, “Do pharmacists have the time to provide these additional services? Pharmacies are looking at how to get prescription fulfillment moved centrally to give the time back to the pharmacist, allowing patients to have choices as to how they get their prescriptions filled, where they get them filled, what types of additional care and when those different types of care can be given to a person. It’s important to make sure we develop the tools that allow for patient choice and allow the initiatives we are putting in place to be scaled in the future.”

On the subject of helping vulnerable patients, Host cited Walmart’s partnership with United Health Group, which involves sharing of resources, information, tools and people. “Sharing the best of both organizations and sharing in the risk and reward will improve the overall access, connectivity and outcomes for those particular patients. We’re focused on seniors first through Medicare Advantage plans. The intent is that [the] model expands to all patient populations, including Medicaid and commercial,” he said.

Rusk addressed how Publix caters to seniors, noting that the retailer is trying to be in as many preferred networks as possible. Publix also has invested a lot of resources into technology “so we can pull production out of stores so that it gives our pharmacists and techs more patient-facing time to do preventive care, immunizations and test and treat,” Rusk said.

Key took the discussion to how PioneerRx is helping retailers around messaging. “There are a lot of retailers that only have one way messaging. We need to embrace synchronous messaging and the ability of a patient to reach out electronically and ask a question. We are working with synchronous messaging and how to do that in a pharmacy,” Key said.

How can retail pharmacy and suppliers help shoppers understand the need to manage their health care proactively?

Nevers noted that over the last 20 years, H-E-B has changed the way it interacts with customers and their understanding of what pharmacies can do for them, including offering free health screenings.

Nevers praised wholesalers and suppliers for working with H-E-B to drive down the cost of the components of health screenings and to produce information and incentives to try different things that incentivize a healthy lifestyle for customers. “When you bundle price in a way that you are interacting with a customer, for example, we get out and talk to customers and touch them, when we’re doing a health screening or an immunization, those are the times when we impact patients’ lives,” Nevers said.

As the panel progressed, Ulrich addressed how Walgreens integrates the front and back of the store experience. “When you think about gaps in care, nutrition, for example, as baby formula became unavailable we did line limits on items so everyone could get their share, and we worked with suppliers and manufacturers to increase our own brand supplies at Walgreens,” Ulrich said.

Additionally, when the FDA allowed baby formula from Europe and approved the sale of OTC hearing aids, Walgreens was first to market with both products. “It’s another opportunity for pharmacy and front of store offerings to come together to provide needs,” Ulrich said.

Next, Key addressed the challenge of the overwhelming amount of information coming into pharmacies. “We’re all excited about sharing e-care plans and wearables and we haven’t thought about what happens when we have all of this data and can’t do anything with it. Is there a legal responsibility? There’s a huge effort in technology about bringing this information together and presenting it in a workflow where you can do something about it. We have to simplify how the information gets to the pharmacy and staff,” he said.

Mondelli discussed how RevSpring enables the flow of information. “Now pharmacists are under the medical benefit structure. They will be doing more medical services, which creates a unique need for technology,” Mondelli said. “We have enabled patients to pay their self-pay portion through Apple pay, text to pay and creating grab and go cues before they even get to the pharmacy. We’re offering ease of use, accessibility and the experience that the consumer expects and demands today but also created a relationship with them after the transaction, engaging them clinically through digital means.”

Lastly, Lashier said, “How do we put affordable automation in stores to allow pharmacists to be able to focus on their patients? Analytics is a big piece of what we’re doing. As we move to more digital and virtual offerings, how do we share those services across each other so we can specialize in things like nutrition in the pharmacy and continue to do inoculations and screenings?” dsn