Diplomat's move to Flint, Mich., featured in local news

FLINT, Mich. The city of Flint soon will give rise to a new job-generating industry in the coming years: specialty pharmacy. Best known as the birthplace of GM, Flint, Mich., now will play host to the expanding Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy, which recently was featured in a WJRT news segment.

(Click here to see the video segment)

Diplomat’s new state-of-the-art headquarters facility, which stands at more than 340,000 sq. ft., is expected to open in Flint later this year, bringing more than 1,000 new jobs to the area over the next five years. Diplomat president and CEO Phil Hagerman expected the number of available positions at Diplomat to quadruple before 2030.

The pending growth within the specialty pharmacy sector will be driven from one of several factors, Hagerman told Drug Store News’ sister publication Specialty Pharmacy earlier this year. Growth opportunity by disease states include oncology, which is already Diplomat’s largest category of specialty business and accounts for almost half of the specialty pharmacy’s business today, Hagerman said. Diplomat also is a significant player within immune response (rheumatoid arthritis, dermatology and Crohn’s disease), the multiple sclerosis care community, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and growth hormone. There are other specialty pharmacy disease states that are within Diplomat’s care spectrum, Hagerman said, but these represent many of the faster growth areas.

Diplomat is the nation's largest independently-owned-and-operated specialty pharmacy. Diplomat generated $380 million in revenue in 2009, according to Inc., ranking No. 55 on that publication's list of top 100 growth companies as measured by gross dollars.