Patients dig the long ball

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — Once the season starts, nobody really remembers the number of stolen bases nabbed by Gregor Blanco (13) or the number of batters who could neither put a Francisco Liriano pitch into play nor tease out a walk (33). But ask the fans how many balls their favorite player knocked out of the park through spring training, chances are they'll be able to tell you.

What Lilly Diabetes and Walgreens are doing is out-of-the-park stuff, where a Walgreens pharmacist dedicated to fielding questions across all disciplines will help augment a diabetes patient's experience with a deeper look into hypoglycemia.

(THE NEWS: Walgreens, Lilly Diabetes partner on hypoglycemia education. For the full story, click here.)

These kinds of consultations will play out across only those 43 Indianapolis-area Walgreens at first, but soon enough this program will be implemented across the chain. And it might just have more impact — driving greater cost savings and better health outcomes — over time.

That's because the program will build upon that patient-pharmacist interaction not out of some need to materially drive compliance and improve outcomes — all of that will come organically — but out of an enhanced experience as defined by the patient. It's that kind of personal focus on that patient and the incorporation of how that patient chooses to engage with an intervention like this that will augment the program's success. Going after customer feedback will be a homerun for those patients, and patients dig the long ball.