December 21, 2023- Walgreens invested $5.2 billion and became the majority stake owner in VillageMD in October 2021 as part of a broader effort to turn its stores into healthcare destinations. Competition between giant pharmacy retailers Walgreens and CVS Health, as well as Amazon, Walmart and Optum, has driven disruption in primary care in the U.S. through increased access, virtual care and value-based care.
In 2022, Walgreens’ VillageMD acquired Summit Health-CityMD for close to $9 billion. Today, there’s 680 VillageMD locations, including 200 clinics co-located with Walgreens, in 26 markets.
Roz Brewer, former Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO, told an audience at the HLTH conference in November 2022, “as soon as we were looking at life beyond the COVID-19 vaccination period and getting into this endemic role in our lives, it was important to think about what’s the next growth venture for this company because dispensing of pharmaceuticals is not going to be our long-term growth avenue.”
She told the HLTH audience that Walgreens would be very aggressive to set up a healthcare continuum and deliver healthcare services through a brand everyone knows. Walgreens operates over 9,000 stores in the U.S.
But as the giant pharmacy retailer prepared to move from acute-based care to more long-term care, a change in leadership was announced. The company, its board of directors and Brewer mutually agreed that Brewer would step down as CEO on Aug. 31.
Learn More in the latest issue of Repertoire Magazine.