Walgreens is an integrated healthcare, pharmacy and retail leader with a 120-year heritage of caring for communities. Operating nearly 9,000 retail locations, Walgreens is proud to be a neighborhood health destination serving nearly 10 million customers each day.
In this interview, Steve Wogen, the Chief Growth Officer at the company, explains how Walgreens is embarked on a mission to become an even more valued partner in the healthcare ecosystem.
He explains how Walgreens works with payers and seeks to become the independent partner of choice. At the same time, Steve outlines the company’s desire to partner with payers which are willing to think outside of the box and engage in relationships that are truly collaborative. This is critical, he says, to driving improved patient outcomes.
Steve also touches on Walgreens evolution as a healthcare company, and shares what’s on the horizon as Walgreens looks ahead to opportunities in the future.
Rebecca Willumson: Hi there. I'm Rebecca Willumson. I'm the publisher of Fierce Healthcare, and I'm here today with Steve Wogen, Chief Growth Officer at Walgreens. Steve, thanks for joining me.
Steve Wogen: Thank you, glad to be here.
Rebecca Willumson: So, before we begin, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your role at Walgreens?
Steve Wogen: Yeah, I serve as Chief Growth Officer at Walgreens. I’ve been with the company for almost a year. It'll be a year next month. And my role at Walgreens is really to figure out the best ways to take the 120 years of experience we have in retail, being in the best corner of every town in America and help make sure that the market sees us as a valued partner in healthcare. My background is all in healthcare. I've been on the provider side, the payer side, the PBM side. I've built new businesses and I'm super excited to be at Walgreens.
Rebecca Willumson: So, tell me, where do you see the greatest opportunity in working with payers?
Steve Wogen: We're working closely with payers every single day. I mean, everybody is facing a lot of the same challenges to lower medical costs and to improve outcomes for the patients and communities we all serve. The best way to do that is by effectively engaging patients. When you look at the assets that Walgreens has, whether it's our nearly 9,000 retail pharmacies across the country or our investments in value-based primary care practices through VillageMD, multi-specialty care through Summit Health, or home care through CareCentrix, we have a whole series of assets that could be leveraged to help engage the consumer in a different way in their healthcare experience. Consumers that have engaged effectively in healthcare have been shown to have 31% lower costs than those that have not. They are more likely to access preventative services as well. So, by pulling all these assets together in a coordinated, patient friendly way, we know we can engage more patients, which ultimately benefits the payers.
Rebecca Willumson: And what do you need from a payer partner that'll really make that relationship work?
Steve Wogen: Our goal is to be the independent partner of choice with everyone and anybody out there. So, what we need are collaborative partners more so than anything else. Organizations that are willing to think outside the box in terms of how they can leverage retail pharmacy and healthcare, organizations that are willing to partner on new innovative solutions, for example, to improve medication adherence, by tightening the connection between pharmacists and primary care and organizations that are really willing to work with us to demonstrate improved outcomes.
Rebecca Willumson: And backing up a little bit, how has Walgreens really evolved as a healthcare company?
Steve Wogen: The company has really built on its experience in retail and pharmacy, and that's critical because those corners that we manage are absolutely essential to how we think about disruptive plays in healthcare. Over time, the company realized it has a true place in its ability to engage consumers and to build out more of a community-based care model if we began to expand into other areas. So, we expanded into primary care through the investment in VillageMD, which then acquired Summit Health and CityMD, which expands us into multi-specialty care, as well as into urgent care. We purchased CareCentrix, which extends our connections into the home. We purchased Shields Pharmacy, which is a specialty pharmacy company that works with hospitals to simplify the specialty experience. So, when you think about everything we do, we are one of the largest medical groups in the country. Most people don't realize that we're one of the largest home care provider networks in the country. And if we can effectively connect the home, the retail pharmacy, the health systems and primary care, we know we can create a better experience for the patient, which again, ultimately improves outcomes.
Rebecca Willumson: So, looking ahead, where do you see new opportunities in the future?
Steve Wogen: Right now, we're starting small, right? We have a lot of pilots that are in place today. With VillageMD we've integrated medication adherence programs with the primary care assets, and we've shown that we can actually reduce hospital readmissions, by improving adherence, by about 36%. We've also taken an opposite approach, and we've actually embedded pharmacists into primary care practices that are not necessarily Walgreens owned practices and we've seen similar results in terms of reducing readmissions. And we're going to continue to build these pilots again and again and again until we get to the point where our aspiration is to take more financial risk working with payers and really help accelerate the movement into value-based care. And I think as we learn more, you'll see a lot of interesting things to come.
Rebecca Willumson: So, my last question, what's next for Walgreens?
Steve Wogen: Building on some of the early success we’re seeing. We have a number of pilots in place, and we need to continue to execute against those. We need to continue to differentiate ourselves with the payers and with the health systems in the marketplace so that they see us as the independent provider of choice and an organization that will work with them to truly improve outcomes, patient experience, and help build new and innovative and disruptive community care models.
Rebecca Willumson: That feels like the perfect place to close out. Thank you so much for joining me.