Mr. Cramer asked Mr. Wentworth: “Can you make your company more of a healthcare company?”
The answer was a confident, “There’s no question.”
Mr. Wentworth said Walgreens is already a strong healthcare company because it provides pharmacy services and has administered 8 million vaccines in its stores. Walgreens has made big investments in healthcare over the last few years, including the company’s VillageMD spending $8.9 billion to acquire Summit Health. The deal gave Village MD around 400 primary care and urgent care clinics.
Walgreens Boots Alliance did announce plans to close 60 VillageMD locations by the end of this year as part of $1 billion in planned cost reductions. But Mr. Wentworth sees a huge opportunity in healthcare.
“As I look forward, the place where I’m super intrigued to leverage this platform is health services,” he told Mr. Cramer. “It’s taking those engagement touchpoints that we have and the trust that our brand has.”
He claimed people are more likely to respond and take action when a pharmacist calls and asks them to come in for a vaccine than if the health plan makes the same request. The action could be valuable for health plans, and Medicare Advantage plans in particular.
“That’s one little example of the way we can leverage the platform and the trust to meaningfully help others that are in the ecosystem achieve their goals,” said Mr. Wentworth.
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