Walgreens, Physicians Group Announce Collaboration

Drug retailer Walgreens and Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group of Chicago said Wednesday that they will collaborate on a healthcare program that will share the results of the drug retailer's pharmacist clinical interventions with primary care physicians of selected patients.

The program is being implemented for Walgreens and Northwestern Memorial employees who have NMPG as their primary care provider, and focuses on those with hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and hyperlipidemia. Patients with these high-cost chronic diseases will receive point-of-care counseling or an intervention as part of the integrated services offered. Information from interventions will be provided to each patient's primary care physician, giving physicians access to important clinical information from Walgreens.

"This relationship is a great example of how healthcare organizations can work together to improve patient care while also benefitting our healthcare system at large," Kermit Crawford, Walgreens president of pharmacy, health and wellness, said in a media release. "We've already seen cases that speak to the effectiveness of the program and further demonstrate the important role our expansive network of pharmacists can play in the future of healthcare delivery."

NMPG is a multisite practice of primary care physicians on the medical staff at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and who also practice at affiliated hospitals in Chicago, Northbrook and Lake County, IL.

"It's invaluable for our physicians to have a pharmacist as a clinical partner sharing this type of information that can be critical to a patient's health," said Daniel Derman, MD, president of NMPG and vice president, Northwestern Memorial. "This benefits those patients tremendously because now there's a richer conversation with their primary doctor that is supported by the pharmacy documentation. It's a more complete way of serving patients and it's particularly rewarding in this instance because those patients are also our employees."

Walgreens pharmacists and NMPG physicians have collaboratively developed an intervention plan for each disease, with questions designed to engage patients and help them understand their diseases.

"Many of our chronic disease patients tell us they see their pharmacist more often than they do their doctor," Crawford said. "Giving physicians further insight into patient behaviors and working with them to spend more time talking with patients can help reduce health care costs and, more importantly, improve a patient's overall health."