Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA) is continuing to expand its health care services capabilities.
The latest investment comes through a partnership with Pearl Health, a provider enablement company that will help accelerate the expansion of value-based care under the Walgreens umbrella.
“Most primary care providers want to transition from a traditional fee-for-service model to a value-based care model that focuses on patient outcomes, but they often lack the tools, insights and access to services they need to do so,” Steve Wogen, chief growth officer of Walgreens’ U.S. Healthcare segment, told Home Health Care News in an email Tuesday. “Walgreens and Pearl aim to solve these barriers by collaborating with community-based primary care physicians to succeed in value-based care arrangements.”
The New York-based Pearl Health offers technology and insight solutions to assist clinical teams with providing personalized treatment for value-based care.
Dr. Harry S. Saag, the national medical director of virtual care at Walgreens Health, detailed how the retail company is looking to create an ecosystem that complements its existing pharmacy footprint across the country at HHCN’s FUTURE event last month.
Home-based care is a key part of this larger strategic direction.
Through the Pearl partnership, Walgreens will also work with participating providers to help patients discharged from the hospital transition to home through CareCentrix.
CareCentrix is the health-at-home solutions company Walgreens purchased in 2022. Since then, former CareCentrix CEO John Driscoll has become executive vice president and president of U.S. Healthcare at Walgreens.
Walgreens will help provide complementary services with Pearl Health, including prescription fulfillment, medication adherence, immunizations, care gap closure and diagnostic testing.
“Care in the home is critical to lowering health care costs, better engaging patients in their care and improving health outcomes,” Wogen said. “Pharmacy services — such as helping ensure adherence to medications — can be critical to successful home-centered management, positive health outcomes and avoiding unnecessary care or readmissions. Bringing together Walgreens’ trusted pharmacy services and community presence with CareCentrix’s suite of solutions, we’re able to help participating providers better address the needs of patients with complex or chronic conditions in the home.”
According to Wogen, about 78% of Americans live within five miles of a Walgreens pharmacy. Because of that, the company is able to take a localized approach to health care.
“We believe in Pearl’s vision and expertise in value-based care and physician enablement,” Wogen said. “Their technology is uniquely positioned to facilitate coordination, making it highly complementary to our existing pharmacy and health care capabilities.”
Besides its majority investment in VillageMD, the partnership with Pearl Health provides a complementary value-based delivery channel for Walgreens that will allow the company to reach more regions, more patients and offer an even broader set of solutions to providers and health systems.
“The shift to value-based care is a key reason why we’ve focused on providers and provider enablement, along with our investments in physician-led health care (VillageMD) and expertise CareCentrix brings in the post-acute and home services space,” Wogen said. “We see a natural path forward to taking risk and leveraging our integrated capabilities to align economics with value creation — with an opportunity to drive significant incremental sales and profit contribution to Walgreens over time.”
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