Top Retailers

BioScrip unites community, specialty Rx
As a specialty pharmacy provider, BioScrip probably isn’t the first name that comes to mind when one hears “retail pharmacy,” but its network of 31 community pharmacies around the country gives it a comfy spot at the table. The kinds of products and services it’s able to offer — ranging from home infusion and treatments for complex, chronic disease states to over-the-counter medications and sometimes even consumables — as a result of its combination of community pharmacy and specialty pharmacy make BioScrip stand out. 
Are coupon ‘extremists’ bad for business?
Call it “the attack of the coupon-crazed shelf sweepers.” It’s the most aggressive form of bargain hunting by consumers willing to spend hours searching out coupon deals, to stock up with enough product to last their families for a year and to turn their homes into veritable warehouses.

Hometown presence, big chain feel

Perhaps concerned that customers might shift their prescriptions after its acquisition, Duane Reade is reminding shoppers that far from reducing services, ownership by Walgreens means expanded services.  

Thanks to this poster at a Duane Reade store at the corner of Park Avenue and 56th Street in New York, customers know that they can pick up their prescriptions at any of Walgreens’ more than 7,000 stores in all  50 states. 
Rite Aid barks up pet goods money tree

Drug retailers are doggedly pursuing the pet care category, with Rite Aid fetching its own piece of the $47.7 billion category, according to the 2009-2010 “National Pet Owners Survey” conducted by the American Pet Products Association. 
RAD employs Rx initiatives, new format

Rite Aid recently has put into play a number of forward-looking initiatives to help improve operations, particularly across pharmacy. The Pennsylvania-based retailer last month announced its test market of six new Wellness store prototypes, and after successfully testing a 15-minute prescription guarantee in three states, Rite Aid expanded that guarantee to all states except New York.  
CVS toasts ‘To Your Health’ with screenings

CVS/pharmacy is taking its focus on preventive care to the streets with its 2011 To Your Health program, staging more than 800 events around the country and screening patients for diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, bone density and vision. Each To Your Health event offers customers access to as much as $150 worth of health screenings, as well as medical reviews with CVS pharmacists; consultations with doctors; dental and chiropractic screenings; and referrals for mammograms and pap smears in certain locations. 
Retailers, consumers seeing purple

Customers are seeing purple again — reminiscent of another switch that took advantage of the eye-catching color purple. Sanofi-Aventis through its Chattem division in March launched Allegra, the last of the second-generation antihistamines. And purple-powered displays, like this in a Walmart in Lancaster, Pa., dotted the retail pharmacy landscape. 
Fast, nimble Walgreens aims to own ‘well’

Walgreens, the kaleidoscopic company that wants to “own well,” is shuffling management and realigning operations as it works to knock down its remaining internal silos and create a seamless, broad-based retail health-and- wellness dynamo. 
MinuteClinic to offer vitamin B12 injections, HPV vaccination

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — CVS Caremark's MinuteClinic division has expanded its suite of services to now include vitamin B12 injections and the human papillomavirus vaccination Gardasil.
Homeopathy helps grow baskets

Groupings of homeopathic pediatric cough-cold solutions, like those pictured here at a central Pennsylvania CVS, have become more the norm given the safety and efficacy debate around several children’s cough-cold ingredients over the past few years, the spate of recalls and the more recent media-driven concern over accidental overdosing.