Walgreens’ expanding immunization effort: The point of the spear for wellness offerings
Nothing highlights Walgreens’ transition to full-service community health provider better than the company’s massive flu shot and immunization program. Under an aggressive, seven-year expansion program driven by pharmacy, health and wellness chief Kermit Crawford, the program has given Walgreens a powerful platform on which to build an expanding menu of preventive health-and-wellness services.
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“Flu shots were the beginning of patients looking at our pharmacists differently — giving our pharmacists permission to play a greater role on the healthcare team,” Crawford told DSN in an interview. One reason: Walgreens pharmacists were talking with patients “not only about flu shots, but about the disease states that required them to get a flu shot,” he said. “It really started that face-to-face interaction.”
Walgreens pharmacists and retail clinicians delivered 8.5 million immunizations in 2013, making its stores the top non-government source for inoculations for influenza and other conditions. “Walgreens is the long-standing private sector leader in providing vaccinations,” the company reported. “As we provide convenient access to this preventive healthcare measure, our immunization program demonstrates the growing patient confidence in pharmacists as an important member of their healthcare team.”
It’s remarkable that the notion of pharmacists providing immunizations barely registered among Americans and their health plans less than a decade ago. A Walgreens pharmacist in Colorado helped trigger a nationwide change in that perception by suggesting that pharmacists provide flu shots; the idea was quickly embraced by company leadership and actively promoted by Crawford as a natural extension of its pharmacists’ healthcare expertise.
The program grew rapidly. “We had about 300 pharmacists certified to do immunizations” in 2007, said Crawford. Today, he added, “all 27,000 of our pharmacists are certified immunizers. We’ve changed laws and regulations in states that now allow pharmacists to provide immunizations. That’s continuing to expand into other immunizations and vaccines.”
“It’s much bigger than Walgreens,” Crawford continued. “It’s really reflective of the industry because all pharmacies throughout the country are now providing flu shots. Today, it is very common for people to get immunizations in a pharmacy from the pharmacy professional. It’s more convenient — nearly one-third of all flu shots given at Walgreens are given on nights, weekends and holidays. And it’s absolutely at a more affordable cost than going to the physician’s office.”
The impact of Walgreens’ immunization program — which now extends in some stores to vaccinations for well over a dozen total conditions — goes way beyond the expansion of a single facet of preventive care in pharmacies, said Crawford. “With this platform, we’re able to reform how health care is delivered in this country when it comes to flu shots. And that’s where pharmacists can play a greater role, because they are the first line of defense or access to health care in many of these communities.”
“About 60% of Walgreens’ stores are in medically underserved communities, so in many cases we are clearly the front door of health care in many of these communities,” he added.
The chainwide availability of electronic health records, HIPAA-protected and accessible to Walgreens pharmacists, also gives its professionals “the ability to create a profile for their patients for all of their vaccines,” said Crawford.
“We’re the only pharmacy that has this electronic health record in all of our drug stores,” he added. “And now we have an immunization app within the Walgreens.com app, so you’ll be able to have your entire vaccination and immunization history in the palm of your hand, just like you can have your drug profile in the palm of your hand. And we’ll be able to notify the patient when they’re due to get a vaccine, and who’s eligible to get those vaccines.”
Thus, the company’s extensive vaccination services play a big role in its expanding health-and-wellness model. “One of the things we’ve wanted to do is allow our pharmacists to play a greater role in the prevention of disease,” said Crawford. “We believe in prevention over treatment, helping prevent chronic disease. So this is innovation helping to lead into prevention and the management of chronic disease.”
With the recent addition of the Alliance Boots pharmacy network in the United Kingdom and Europe, Walgreens’ reach as a major immunization provider is going global. Pharmacists at Boots already are giving flu shots, “but with the larger vaccination program we’ve put in place, we will be able to expand that into Boots and particularly into other countries,” Crawford explained.
What’s more, Walgreens has allied with the United Nations Foundation to help provide up to 3 million life-saving vaccines to children in developing countries through a donation to the Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign. “With our ‘Give a shot, get a shot’ program, now we’re providing vaccines to children in undeveloped countries that don’t have access to these vaccines,” said Crawford.