Looking forward to NACDS Total Store Expo
LAS VEGAS — Though the focus at ThoughtSpot 2015 has been on AmerisourceBergen’s independent pharmacy customers, as the company CEO and president Steve Collis pointed out, the distributor’s relationship with large chains — particularly Walgreens Boots Alliance — was the “elephant in the room” at the conference’s General Session.
With the National Association of Chain Drug Stores’ Total Store Expo just three weeks away, the company is shifting its focus to issues that are front and center in the minds of its chain customers. But that shift isn’t as large as it might seem. Though chain pharmacies and independent pharmacies can seem worlds apart at times, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. president Bob Mauch told Drug Store News Friday during ThoughtSpot 2015 that concerns among chain and independent pharmacists are rather similar.
“The interesting thing about community pharmacy in general is that the challenges are the same,” Mauch said. “Whether you're an independent pharmacist or part of a chain — large or small —you're still focused on making sure you have access to specialty products, access to narrow networks and really the overall reimbursement environment.”
Alongside the rise of specialty pharmacy, narrowing networks and the pharmacies growing role in chronic disease management, both chain and independent pharmacists also are facing a changing healthcare landscape. In particular, the field has begun transforming from the recognized fee-for-service model to a pay-for-performance model, with outcomes-based reimbursement becoming a large component of pharmacists’ concerns. ABDC’s expertise — its marketplace-leading outcomes research — and its newly launched and renamed PSAO, Elevate Provider Network, are what Mauch points to as the biggest assets for chain customers to capitalize on.
“We're really well-positioned, however things change — and the pay-for-performance trend is a macro trend that will have a lot of iterations over the next several years — but AmerisourceBergen has the expertise right now to help our customers win,” Mauch said. “We're not trying to build this expertise or buy this expertise — this is core to AmerisourceBergen. Patient access, specialty product and growth within that industry are what AmerisourceBergen is all about — frankly it's what we've always been about. So this is a unique time for us, and we think our special capabilities will be really valuable to our customers, particularly the chains as we go forward.”
The National Association of Chain Drug Stores’ Total Store Expo will take place Aug. 22 to 25 in Denver at the Colorado Convention Center and will feature hundreds of exhibitors, including AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp.