WOONSOCKET — The proposed $69 billion CVS Health – Aetna merger concentrates significant market power, allowing the pharmacy business to drive the insurance business’s customers to their services, but officers of each company said they’ll rely on better service and cost to draw customers, not coercion.
“At the end of the day, we’re creating a platform that’s going to engage consumers and reduce costs and improve outcomes,” said CVS Health President and CEO Larry J. Merlo during during an investor call Monday morning.
Mark T. Bertolini, Aetna chairman and CEO, said their rough vision of the new model for stores under the new plan would be a store that builds a network around it. Customers would use CVS stores because they provide guidance as well as care, at a competitive price.
CVS Pharmacy locations will include space for wellness, clinical and pharmacy services, vision, hearing, nutrition, beauty and medical equipment, in addition to the products and services customers currently enjoy, said Mike DeAngelis, senior director of corporate communications for CVS Health.
A new health services offering available in many CVS locations will function as a community-based health hub dedicated to improving health, answering patients’ questions, and providing prescription drugs and health coverage, according to DeAngelis.
“We encourage them to use us as a navigator up front, to keep coming back to the store, because we can coordinate care better that way. So as a result, the experience is better for them, it’s simpler, it’s cheaper, because we’re finding the lowest cost of care,” Bertolini said.
“But we’re not going to do it by forcing the managed care on the member. What we’re going to do is build the experience for them,” making it attractive through convenience and cost, Bertolini said.
“Our ability to build a model that customers want to use because of the value that it provides, I think that becomes a key guiding principle of bringing these two companies together,” Merlo said.
Further details of how the two companies will work together have yet to be ironed out. Bertolini said there will be pilot programs to test the ways the companies can work together and what best serves the consumer, he said.
“We’re not all the way there yet,” Bertolini said, “We have a lot of work to do as we integrate the companies.”
Rob Borkowski is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Borkwoski@PBN.com.
