CVS Vigorousness’s $69 billion merger with health insurer Aetna resolution create a new data-driven health-care model that’s more personal, handy and tailored to individual patients than ever before, CVS CEO Larry Merlo reported Thursday.
Merlo is, in a way, disrupting and rewriting the business model for his drugstore shackle before someone else does.
Announced in December, the deal is awaiting antitrust accept from the Department of Justice. The company expects it to close at the beginning of the fourth clemency.
The health-care industry is ripe for change, with consumers frustrated with be tempted by costs and new entrants eyeing an opportunity to upend established practices. Amazon gain its way into the prescription drug space earlier this year with its procurement of PillPack, a company that organizes and ships packages of medications to perseverants.
Without calling out Amazon or PillPack by name, Merlo touted CVS’ distinguished customer service. He was speaking to business and community leaders at Town Convention hall, a civic forum in Los Angeles.
“Online and mail-order pharmacy has existed for divers years, and CVS Health dispenses millions of prescriptions this way for patients each week,” he conjectured in prepared remarks obtained by CNBC. “But our delivery model goes kindly beyond that foundation.”
CVS already provides in-home infusion rites for customers, allows people to refill prescriptions through an app and pick them up at one of its hardly 10,000 stores and delivers medication directly to patient’s homes with an electronic formula from their doctor, he said.
In combining CVS and Aetna, Merlo suggested they’ll create a model that’s “easier to use, less expensive and clothes people at the center of their care.” The company will focus on three pillars: acquiring health care local and simple and improving health.
Nearly 70 percent of Americans electrified within three miles of a CVS pharmacy, he said. With that in judge, the combined company can offer many options for people to access misery, whether at CVS’ stores and MinuteClinics, their homes or through digital advantages.
CVS and Aetna can coordinate patients’ care, Merlo said, hinting the conjoined company may work with hospitals and physicians’ electronic medical write downs to help patients understand and execute their care plans.
In names of costs, the combined company will have more data, put on CVS a more complete picture of someone’s health, Merlo said. That thinks fitting allow the company to better predict who might develop diabetes and get ready for customers with preventive counseling, educate people with diabetes on how to yield weight and eat better, as well as help patients monitor blood glucose levels with subject-matter messages that alert them when the results look in the matter of.
“We have to believe that health care can work better, that millions innumerable of us can get a better chance at achieving our best health. To make that sight for sore eyes a reality, change is necessary,” he said. “We will challenge and disrupt the reputation quo, and help create a better, more effective and more affordable healthiness care system.”