Walgreens’ Crawford named first-ever DSN Pharmacy Innovator
The Kermit Crawford era at Walgreens is drawing to a close.
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As of Dec. 31, Crawford, one of the industry’s best known and most respected pharmacy executives, will retire as president of pharmacy, health and wellness at the nation’s top drug store chain. He’ll depart some 31 years after joining Walgreens as a pharmacy intern in Houston, while earning a BS in pharmacy from Texas Southern University, and after leaving an indelible stamp on the company’s core retail mission as a broad-based, patient-focused center for community health-and-wellness services.
As Walgreens’ chief pharmacist, Crawford oversaw a vast pharmacy, health and wellness network spanning more than 8,200 drug stores in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In that role, he envisioned and championed a higher level of practice for the company’s pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, and helped spark a dramatic transformation in the way Walgreens goes to market and serves customers.
“As architect of Walgreens’ key growth strategy to advance the role of community pharmacy in health care, Crawford helped launch the company into a new century of service and value creation, modernize retail pharmacy-led health-and-wellness services in America, and meet the nation’s expanding need for convenient, quality, affordable health care,” the company reported July 24 when announcing Crawford’s plan to retire.
In light of his many contributions to advancing the practice of pharmacy, enabling pharmacists to practice at the top of their education, as well as the role community pharmacy plays in the nation’s healthcare system, and a vision that the real product is the outcome and not the pill, the editors and publishers of DSN selected Crawford as its first-ever DSN Pharmacy Innovator Award winner at an exclusive reception last month.
Beginning in early 2015, Crawford will retain a connection with Walgreens as “senior counselor” to president and CEO Greg Wasson. He’ll also become executive in residence and senior adviser to the dean at the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy, while boosting his already active role with the American Diabetes Association by serving as national chair for its new Ad Council campaign.
“After 31 years with Walgreens ... the time is right to retire from the company to broaden my horizons and seek new ways to serve,” Crawford said. “I love Walgreens, cherish my years and friends here, and the incredibly dedicated people across the company. To me, community pharmacy has long been an unsung hero in our healthcare system, helping primary caregivers to provide convenient, affordable and essential health-and-wellness services in neighborhoods across America. I look forward to continuing to help Greg Wasson and the team to advance the role of community pharmacy in health care.”
Post-retirement, Crawford said he’ll continue to campaign for provider status for pharmacists and a higher level of practice, on behalf of both patients and health plan payers. “Both patients and payers are looking for a personalized experience,” he said. “Patients want us to have information about them — it needs to be a relevant conversation about them. Payers want it to be about their brand. Everyone wants a better, more personalized experience. Everyone wants better health outcomes. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Walgreens’ chief executive had high praise for the longtime pharmacy and health chief. “Words cannot capture the magnitude of Kermit Crawford’s impact on Walgreens and our people, on America’s retail pharmacy industry and on the health and well-being of millions of customers and patients we have been privileged to serve over the years,” Wasson said.
Crawford’s impact on U.S. retailing and health care hasn’t gone unnoticed outside the industry. In 2012, Savoy Magazine named him one of the “Top 100 Most Influential Blacks in Corporate America.” Black Enterprise Magazine called him one of the “Top 100 Most Powerful Executives in Corporate America.”
The real challenge: patient outcomes
More than most high-profile pharmacy leaders, Crawford was able to articulate what pharmacy practice should be about. In an era of unprecedented challenges for a healthcare system saddled with unsustainably rising costs, a shrinking network of primary care physicians, an aging population in need of quicker and more convenient access to care, and an explosion in chronic conditions like diabetes and hyperlipidemia, community pharmacy has to reinvent itself, Crawford said.
Repeatedly over the past decade, he has laid out a clear vision for a higher level of community pharmacy practice that goes way beyond dispensing and basic prescription counseling. And, with the full support of president and CEO Greg Wasson, himself a pharmacist, Crawford has taken that vision to drive a transformation in the way Walgreens’ 27,000 pharmacists and its retail clinicians serve patients as a convenient and accessible source for community-based health-and-wellness services.
Beginning with his promotion to SVP pharmacy services in 2007 (he was promoted again to executive VP in 2010, and head of all pharmacy, health-and-wellness services the following year), Crawford set about reinventing the way Walgreens goes to market as a retail pharmacy and health services provider. “In this role, he pioneered the effort to transform community pharmacy from a transaction-based practice to one focused on access to affordable, quality care,” Walgreens reported.
Pharmacy, Crawford explained, had no choice but to evolve. It must fill the void that’s opened in a health system desperate for new, more cost-effective and more accessible modes of care and disease prevention.
“Pharmacists are the most trusted professionals in the industry. But they’re also the most underutilized professionals in the healthcare system,” said Crawford. “Pharmacists are not practicing at the top of their education.”
At Walgreens, he said, “the product is no longer the pill; the product is the outcome. We have to begin to address the real challenge, which is the outcome. And pharmacists can do significantly more to address the healthcare needs of this country, especially as it relates to quality, access and affordability. Because when you look at the key stakeholders — physicians, payers including PBMs, health plans or government, patients themselves and the providers — the pharmacist has more contact with each of those stakeholders than anyone else. So the pharmacist can connect the dots in American health care.”
That elevation in pharmacist expectations and professional status was a driving force in the gradual realignment of Walgreens’ mission over the past six or seven years. “I think the real transformation at Walgreens has been putting the patient first,” Crawford told Drug Store News. “And when you do that, you move from this transaction-based dispensing model to one that plays a far greater role in health care, and comes around building a relationship with the patient.”
“Our approach has been about providing b