The “new cool kid on the block” is usually the one who creates an impact and whose actions get everyone else interested. When it comes to the delivery of healthcare, there seems to be a very definite new cool kid, and that’s the pharmacy. Drug Store News recently featured a detailed review of Rite Aid, one of our retail network partners. The steps that Rite Aid is taking exemplify the many ways in which retail pharmacies are refocusing their strategies around healthcare.
What’s new?
Rite Aid is redefining its goals in an effort to become more of a healthcare services retailer. Ken Martindale, President and COO of Rite Aid stated that “Health care is changing and our role in health care is changing”. One of their newest innovations is HealthSpot, a doctor consultation kiosk which is available in 25 Ohio stores. This cutting-edge technology allows patients to connect with a network of medical professionals in a private 40-square foot station. Patients can video-conference medical professionals from Kettering Health Network and University Hospitals, and pediatric specialists from UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital.
Through their 2014 acquisition of RediClinics, Rite Aid is offering a broader scope of acute care services. In February 2015, RediClinics were unveiled in 24 Rite Aid stores in the Philadelphia and Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area. They plan to open a total of 50 RediClinics in fiscal 2016, which includes opening additional locations in Texas.
Another initiative that Rite Aid is piloting involves adding in-store beauty and vitamin advisers to help consumers explore the large assortment of products and brands that they offer in these key departments. The essential idea behind this effort is to facilitate a consultation with a pharmacist or other expert available in the store.
Rite Aid is clearly focused on positioning their stores as a healthcare destination, rather just a place where you go to pick up your prescriptions. By creating new services and leveraging innovation through technology, they are continuing to grow and differentiate their business.
Let’s get excited
The innovations that Rite Aid is undertaking demonstrate just how much the healthcare landscape is expanding. It is an exciting time to be a part of the industry. Pharmacy retailers are identifying and acting on consumer needs, and are changing the way that they do business. By focusing more on the health service experience, retailers are creating savvy and technologically-advanced ways to offer consumers more options to benefit their lives.
As the retail pharmacy continues to evolve, it is also becoming a more dominant player in the media space. More consumers will find themselves in retail settings to participate and take advantage of the new initiatives that companies like Rite Aid are putting into place. Your neighborhood pharmacy is no longer the place that you stop at once a month to get your prescriptions filled, and maybe pick up some ibuprofen once the holiday headaches start. It is becoming a destination focused on health and educational resources that enhance your life.
With the ever-increasing number of consumers shopping the aisles of the pharmacy comes the opportunity to reach them and provide educational materials to key target audiences. The best time for pharmaceutical brands to communicate with prospective patients is when health is top of mind. Whether people are walking the aisles of the pharmacy to buy an OTC, speak with a vitamin expert, or visit a HealthSpot, they have their health on their minds. This is the perfect time and place for brands to educate them.
Rite Aid is one of our key retail network partners, and we follow with great interest their continued achievements in revamping the common practices of the retail pharmacy. As they refocus their goals, they are directing their efforts to focus on what consumers want, and how they can better provide education and improve healthcare. We are sure that there is more to come from, the “new cool kid on the block”.
