INSIGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES

News that CVS Caremark pulled in record results for the fourth quarter and year 2008, in light of the current economy, not only speaks volumes of the company’s well-oiled team of merchants, marketing and operations executives but is also a testament to its evolving role as a pharmacy healthcare service company focused on healthcare reform.

The announcement that MinuteClinic and Cleveland Clinic have entered a clinical collaboration is a major example of how providers are communicating electronically to advance patient care, aside from e-prescribing.

While most of the retail-based clinic operators, such as MinuteClinic and Take Care Health Systems, have long used electronic health records to share patient information and ensure continuity of care, this streamlining of systems takes that communication yet one step higher.

WASHINGTON “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” That dictum, attributed to Ben Franklin, could apply to the increasingly urgent campaign by a wide-ranging assortment of pharmacy and retail advocacy groups to speak with one voice in policymaking circles. In the midst of an economic crisis, a dysfunctional healthcare system in dire need of new cost-saving solutions and a revolution in technology and communications, pharmacy leaders from every practice setting are acutely aware of the need for a united front.

A few months after San Francisco drug stores cleared their inventories of anything with tobacco, a city on the opposite side of the country passed a similar ban. Boston has banned tobacco sales in retail pharmacies as well, but its ban covers all stores that operate pharmacies, not just drug stores.

WASHINGTON Doesn’t anybody here pay their taxes? Tom Daschle, the former powerful leader of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, was one of President Barack Obama’s earliest Cabinet selections and his top choice to run both the huge federal healthcare bureaucracy and a new, White House office spearheading the planned overhaul of the healthcare system.

This full-page ad taken out by Walgreens is important as it comes at a time when healthcare reform is top of mind.

The ad serves as a call to action for healthcare providers, along with state and federal government, to work together to develop a high quality and affordable healthcare system. It also calls for payers, politicians and policy makers to recognize the value of an expanded role for retail-based clinics beyond simply acute care.

There has always been an undercurrent of thought that a pound of prevention might save an ounce of cure. And now that cure is outweighing prevention in terms of cost, combined with the fact that Americans are looking for just about any way to save a buck these days.

Pick an outside turnaround artist/corporate hotshot to lead the nation’s most storied drug store retailer? Forget it.