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As the largest pharmacy management company in the United States, CVS Health commanded an impressive $185 billion in revenue last year, and their massive prescription plan covered more than 90 million customers.
Through a merger with the national insurance provider Aetna, approved by the Justice Department in October 2018, CVS Health has doubled down on their health insurance strategy.
According to CVS chief executive Larry J. Merlo, the merger will allow CVS and Aetna to streamline customer care and take control of rapidly increasing healthcare costs.
This focus on the customer carries over into every facet of their business.
In a time when many brick-and-mortar stores — including national pharmacy chains like Walgreens — are looking to scale back their locations and rethink their services, CVS Health’s focus on innovating their customer experience and services offered has helped them to continuously grow their customer base and expand their business.
Reinventing the Prescription Label
The labeling on prescription bottles has long been ripe for innovation.
For more than 50 years they have looked more or less the same — nondescript adhesive labels with small hard-to-read instructions that can often get lost among the warnings and personal information also included on the bottle.
Prescription medication has a big non-adherence problem among users, and the role of poor labeling is decidedly non-trivial.
With traditional labels, people can easily misunderstand when they are supposed to take their medications, when they need to renew or refill, or confuse one medication with another.
ScriptPath is CVS Health’s innovative answer to this unnecessary confusion.
ScriptPath features newly designed labels with large easy-to-read type, simple color-coded graphic schedule information, clear renewal and prescription information, and a scheduling service for people taking multiple medications.
Keeping track of one medication is easy enough, but when customers take three or more medications, tracking when they should be taken can be difficult.
ScriptPath creates an individualized dosing schedule for each customer using an exclusive clinical engine and a comprehensive system that takes into account what times of day certain medications are most effective.
The ultimate goal of ScriptPath is to provide more digestible prescription information while reducing and streamlining the number of times a person needs to take all of their medications.
These simple steps lead to less confusion, higher levels of adherence and, ultimately, healthier customers.
Embracing Mobile for Simplicity and Safety
Modern customers expect a certain level of convenience and connection with their mobile devices.
This new technical savvy has not been lost on CVS, and in response, their innovation labs have developed a wide variety of useful mobile tools.
The CVS pharmacy mobile app includes features like the Pill Identifier and the Drug Interaction Checker. Both of these features are geared toward helping customers avoid issues with their prescription medications.
The company’s new Mobile Prescription Pickup feature also promises to make picking up your prescriptions much faster and more secure.
Instead of needing to provide a customer’s personal information, Mobile Prescription Pickup consolidates everything through the customer’s mobile device. The CVS mobile app generates a unique barcode and series of numbers. Then, the pharmacist can either scan the barcode or enter the numbers to verify your prescription pickup.
Committing to Healthier Products and Consumers
One of the smartest moves CVS has made in recent years is to hone their overall vision and mission of their company.
As the largest pharmacy manager in the country, CVS has the unique ability to leverage their built-in customer base to promote healthier attitudes and practices.
In 2014, CVS banned the selling of tobacco products in all of their stores. Likewise, they have reconfigured their product offerings to be more health-conscious.
For instance, they removed trans-fats from all of their store-branded products before the mandatory deadline, and have committed to using fewer harmful chemicals in their health and beauty products.
The company has also mobilized a response to the increasingly alarming opioid epidemic sweeping the nation.
They are rolling out 750 additional drug disposal collection units in stores throughout the country, along with providing improved opioid handling protocols and educational programs designed to educate employees and consumers about the dangers of misusing medications.
All of this adds up to more focused and consistent branding that allows them to put their customers first.
Spreading Innovation Around the World
Moving forward, CVS Health wants to spread their zeal for innovation around the world.
In 2013, they acquired the Brazilian pharmacy management company, Onofre. Since then, CVS has begun introducing the same innovative products and services that have made them a household name in the United States to the Brazilian market.
Navigating international markets represents a rather complex challenge, as each region and country brings with it a comprehensive set of regulatory issues that need to be overcome.
However, CVS has driven a newfound commitment within Onofre to invest in innovative digital solutions such as line-less payment processing on the customer side and product storage robots on the supply side.
This commitment to innovation and change in order to provide the best possible services and products to customers fits with the CVS customer-focused mission.
Continually innovating their customer experience is a central reason for the company’s notable success.
