Drugstore.com teams with Medco to offer members expanded online health store
BELLEVUE, Wash. Drugstore.com on Thursday announced a strategic alliance with Medco Health Solutions, under which Medco will offer its members access to an integrated online store featuring a wide range of non-prescription consumer health products, including over-the-counter medicines, expected to begin in mid-2009.
“We look forward to developing this exciting new offering with Medco, which provides pharmacy benefits for over 60 million Americans,” stated Dawn Lepore, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of drugstore.com. “The alliance supports our strategy to leverage the drugstore.com ecommerce health, beauty and wellness platform and extend our leadership in consumer health merchandising, marketing, fulfillment, and customer care.”
Drugstore.com will provide technical development and operation services, consumer health products and OTC merchandising, fulfillment capabilities and customer care for the non-prescription-drug offerings in the Medco branded online store.
“We envision this collaboration with drugstore.com will, over time, enable Medco to efficiently develop and deliver a broad spectrum of new consumer-based products and services that complement our prescription drug expertise and extend the continuum of care for the approximately one in five Americans we serve nationwide,” John Driscoll, president of new markets for Medco Health Solutions, said.
Through the agreement, Medco will provide its members access to a comprehensive portfolio of health-related products that complement prescription drug care—especially for patients with chronic and complex conditions. Members will be presented with a tailored set of non-prescription products aligned with their known health condition, and access to a broader set of consumer health items that provide convenient one-stop shopping. Members will also benefit from an advanced safety net to help ensure that for certain OTC medicines they are informed of interactions with the prescription drugs that they may also be taking—a growing issue in the retail pharmacy environment as more medicines transition from prescription to OTC availability.
Flexible spending account services for Medco clients and members will be supported through the drugstore.com SIGIS certified system to identify and approve FSA-eligible over-the-counter products. FSA debit cards are accepted and FSA-only receipts may be printed for reimbursement.