Aiming to reinvent Rx, Kerr extends renewal efforts

Drug Store News, Jan 19, 2009 by Jim Frederick

RALEIGH, N.C. -- When a group of former Thrift Drug executives bought Kerr Drug from JCPenney in 1997, neither Kerr's new management team nor the chain pharmacy industry it represented knew the North Carolina chain would soon embark on a mission to reinvent the concept of the health-based community drug store. But over the past decade, that has been Kerr's mission.

Under chairman, president and CEO Tony Civello, Kerr has emerged as the chain drug store industry's leading innovator in pharmacy-based patient care. That role, Civello has indicated, was essentially forced on the company by the realities of a crowded drug store marketplace, which demanded a new approach to serving patient needs in the Carolinas and a willingness to scrap old concepts of community pharmacy. But it's a role that Kerr's leaders have always appeared to relish.

Kerr virtually pioneered the concept of in-store health centers staffed by clinical care and home care specialists, and it continues to push back the frontiers of community practice with broad-based clinical programs and new ways to partner with physicians, employer-based health plans and other stakeholders. Those efforts have won the chain a high-profile role in community wide pharmacy care programs like the Asheville Project and ChecKmeds NC, a state-sponsored medication therapy management program, as well as recognition from many healthcare organizations and patient advocacy groups. Among them: the American Diabetes Association, which named Kerr the 2008 ADA Provider of the Year for North Carolina, and Outcomes Pharmaceutical Health Care, which recognized the company as the top chain drug store provider for medication therapy management in 2007.

In November 2007, Kerr debuted a new store format that culminates a decade of experimentation in health and pharmacy retailing, front-end convenience merchandising and even coffee shop operations. The so-called "hybrid" store, in Sanford, N.C., combines such leading-edge clinical care concepts as diagnostic services and community outreach programs with a full-scale drug store and cafe.

In September, Kerr's community outreach efforts included a new fundraising program for wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, called HELP Wounded Tarheel Troops.

Kerr's store count remains essentially unchanged over the past two or more years, at 102 units in North and South Carolina. But that number is deceptive, and masks a steady and ongoing program of renovation, relocation and upgrading within the chain's store base as the chain spruces up and expands existing stores, adds new healthcare centers and moves some units into larger and more productive nearby locations.

2009 is no exception. "We've got four stores relocating from strip centers to freestanding locations this year," said Kerr's director of marketing, Diane Eliezer.

KERR

Sales 2008: $665 million *

RX Sales 2008: $432 million *

Store Count: 102

* Sales estimated