Reflecting on 33 years of changes in an evolving pharmacy industry

Drug Store News, Oct 20, 1997 by James Frederick

Few pharmacists who enter the profession ever rise to the stature or level of influence that Bill Thien did in his career with the Walgreen Co.

Thien, a 1965 graduate of the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, joined Walgreens that same year as a pharmacist in Topeka, Kan. After a stint with St. Louis-based Medicare-Glaser in the 1970s, Thien returned to Walgreens, rising to become the top pharmacy and healthcare executive at the nation's leading drug chain. He served in that post for the better part of two decades before his retirement this year.

From 1979 to 1997, Thien spearheaded the growth of Walgreens' prescription business--from a chain doing less than $300 million in annual script revenues into a national, $6 billion retail powerhouse responsible for eight of every 100 retail prescriptions filled in the United States. To help drive that growth, Thien was a tireless advocate of innovation and new technology in the delivery of pharmacy services. He also championed efforts by Walgreens to stay in close touch with American consumers via focus groups, consumer behavior studies and intensive marketing efforts.

Listening constantly to patients and consumers, he said, is the best way to address their needs and stay at the forefront of retail pharmacy.

Along with his duties as head of Walgreens' healthcare efforts, Thien also found time for outside duties. He served as chairman of the pharmacy affairs committee for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and chaired the organization's 1985 Pharmaceutical Conference. He was also board president of Epilepsy Services of Northeastern Illinois in 1988, a member of the Corporate Advisory Council / Illinois Academy of Family Physicians Foundation in 1995 and vice president of the Walgreen Benefit Fund.

Thien's efforts to advance the cause of retail pharmacy at the legislative, professional and retail levels earned him the 1994 NACDS Harold W. Pratt Award. Last month, he was honored as the first annual recipient of the Drug Store News REX Award for Chain Pharmacy Executive of the Year.

Drug Store News caught up with Thien last month. What follows are excerpts from that conversation.

Chain Pharmacy: Congratulations on being chosen Chain Pharmacy Executive of the Year. Why don't we start by talking about some of the biggest changes in pharmacy you witnessed in your years with Walgreens.

Thien: I'd have to say computerization was one of the biggest things to happen to pharmacy. And from an efficiency and productivity standpoint, there are leaps and bounds of progress to come. I think my generation just scratched the surface on how to use that machine.

Chain Pharmacy: Your generation also brought it in, though.

Thien: Yes, and looking back over my 30 years, the privilege of being involved in that progress in the early '70s was certainly one of the highlights of my career.

Chain Pharmacy: Was that with Walgreens?

Thien: No, although the Walgreen Co. was also involved in the process. That was during my time with Medicare-Glaser. But Walgreens, Thrift and Medicare-Glaser were three of those companies that not only looked at the [automation] process but made the investment in the process. And of course the Walgreen Co. is the only one of those three that's still independent and in business.

Walgreens' chief financial officer at the time, Chuck Hunter, deserves all the credit in the world for fighting that battle with boards of directors, with operations people, with data processing people, and saying, "This is the way of the future." And I think he did that not only for Walgreen Co. but for the industry. It required some guts. Chuck was a tight-fisted financial guy--which is what a chief financial officer has to be--but he had the guts and vision to put that money on the line, to say this is really good for us. It's long since proven that's the case.

But having said all that, the next 20 years have to be really exciting for the young people coming into the business. What are you going to ask this machine to do? What can it do for the patient, for the pharmacist, in changing the way they practice? I think they really haven't scratched the surface.

If I were a young man today, I'd probably get a dual degree in computer science and pharmacy. Because that's where not only our profession, but the world, stands to gain so much. That's where visionaries are so important: they see it happening before the rest of us. And I hope the Walgreen Co. always has that kind of people working for them, that are a step ahead of the crowd. Their PreScribe product [designed to link pharmacists electronically with prescribing physicians via computer] was certainly a step in that direction. It's since sold off, but the concept was right there.

Chain Pharmacy: The concept was certainly sound, but it will take more support from the physician community. Did they support the PreScribe concept when it was first introduced ?

Thien: Oh, the physicians loved it. The problem is cost. People have to figure out how to [transmit scripts electronically from doctor to pharmacist] for far less money per transaction. How can you do this for a dime? You can't afford a quarter or 50 cents. A dime is even high priced. Theoritically, it should be done for a penny, two pennies.