Senior Walmart executives regularly invoke the name of Sam Walton when it serves to reinforce a point regarding the company’s business model or the cultural principles on which Walton is said to have founded the company.

Walmart’s first small-format Express stores have only been open about six months, but strong initial consumer acceptance, coupled with increasingly flexible real estate, points to the near certainty of an eventual rollout.


About half of people who provide care and support to loved ones said they are more likely to be nonadherent to their own personal medication regimen than to neglect providing medications to those they are caring for, according to a new study.

How much adherence lowers total costs, why some patients do not take their medications as prescribed and whether what’s saved in health care offsets higher drug costs are among the questions that have not been as clearly understood.


Private-label penetration at CVS/pharmacy locations is expected to grow to more than 20% in the next two to three years, and to help drive that growth, the retailer has developed its new Just the Basics line of store-brand products.


CVS Caremark’s annual meeting of shareholders in May was of special importance as it marked the official retirement of former chairman and CEO Tom Ryan, who left the growing company in the hands of a strong, capable new leader — Larry Merlo.


Patients with chronic heart disease are likely to have several doctors and take nearly a dozen medications that are filled in at least two different pharmacies, resulting in many patients struggling to keep their medications straight, according to a new study.


A CVS Caremark-sponsored study looking at in-person, electronic, telephone, fax and mail communications that counsel patients to stay on their medications found that pharmacists in a retail setting are the most influential healthcare “voices” in promoting medication adherence.


CVS Caremark may be highly focused on driving medication adherence, curbing rising healthcare costs and improving the health outcomes of its patients, but there’s no doubt that its retail segment remains a critical part of its business, as evidenced by the innovative initiatives playing out at the front end.



With its latest string of initiatives designed to bring it out of a slump that lasted more than a decade, Rite Aid is aiming for “wellness” to do for it what the lower-case “i” did for Apple.



The 19th century British writer William Hickson may have written, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again,” but he only had half the story. By all means, try again, but don’t do the same thing over and over and expect different results.


Happy days are here again! Consumer confidence rebounded 1.6 points in April from a dip in March, according to the Consumer Confidence Index, despite the fact that high-gas-price stories are dominating the airwaves.