Will whole health fortify supermarket pharmacy?

Drug Store News, March 15, 1999 by Al Heller

"While the successful Meal Solutions concept came to supermarkets as a defensive maneuver against restaurants, whole health has a different motivation, and it may be easier to implement for two reasons: We're playing into a substantially faster-growing market, and we're not asking supermarkets to enter a more complex business, like chef training. We're only asking them to retrain pharmacists or hire people with knowledge such as naturalists," Bishop said.

To further enhance the foundation of whole health, GMDC will offer a Continuing Education seminar at its HBC Marketing Conference in September. Provided by the Temple University School of Pharmacy, the three-credit live seminar will "explain pharmacists' role within whole health, and address areas of nutrition, natural and herbal products where they need reinforcement," said White.

Even sooner than that, GMDC and FMI will jointly host a Whole Health Education Conference June 17-18.

"Plenty of questions still need to be explored with whole health," said White. "There's a multiplicity of solutions. You can go lightly or heavily. You can just have pharmacists give some recommendations, or you can brand the whole store, bring in nutritionists, natural products and produce into a specified area of the store. Not every supermarket can handle a pharmacy, but they can still practice some aspects of whole health."

And, some are, in their own way. At Ukrop's Super Markets, patient-focused pharmacy is in every new store and remodel, and wellness centers in a handful

of stores have actually received cognitive reimbursement for rendering disease-state management services on diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma and high cholesterol.

Another targeted effort has a corporate nutritionist run store tours and help foster programs to help people with diabetes. One outcome: an Appetite for Health Diabetes Shopping Guide compiles recipes, information on food labels, eating and glucose monitoring guidelines, and a resource list. Ukrop's gives these away for free at its pharmacies, and tells local doctors it does this.

John Beckner, R.Ph., the chain's director of pharmacy, also hosts a local cable television health show, where viewers call in with questions.

Moreover, Jewel-Osco has developed an asthma-care program featuring counseling on lifestyle changes and drug therapy compliance. Shaw's has been testing a health clinic in one of its Connecticut stores that offers disease-state management programs for people with asthma, diabetes and other chronic ailments. Wegmans has opened up similar clinics.

The big picture of supermarket pharmacy

Today's thinking about pharmacy and wellness is a far cry from when food chains didn't know how to handle a professional department with many cultural and operational differences from the rest of the store. After many years of treating the department as a cultural misfit, supermarkets have learned some important lessons.

For one, pharmacists often still earn more than many store managers, but they're being managed in ways that reduce friction and make them team partners. Second, as high-volume, fast-turn environments, supermarkets are overcoming their discomfort with the large inventory investment and slow turns of pharmacy by entering new types of supply relationships with their wholesalers. Third, supermarkets are networking with each other to overcome their individual lack of pharmacy presence within specific markets in order to gain access to managed care plans.