Walmart To Expand Specialty Pharmacy Business

Walmart is expanding its “autoimmune-focused” specialty pharmacy business to more than 30 locations across nine states as retailers beef up the more lucrative aspects of the prescription drug business.

The nation’s largest retailer, which has long had traditional pharmacies in its stores, Thursday said it was opening 25 new autoimmune-focused “Specialty Pharmacies of the Community” across five states.

The expansion brings the total number of autoimmune-focused specialty pharmacies to 31 across nine states from a half dozen in four states currently. Such pharmacies will be located in Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Wisconsin after the expansion.

Specialty pharmacies are an increasingly important player in the U.S. healthcare system given the flood of expensive drugs on the market derived from biotechnology. Such medicines are more complicated than pills and capsules picked up at the corner drugstore or at a traditional Walmart pharmacy and often require specialized administration, refrigeration, packaging and patient instructions.

Walmart, which announced three months ago it was shuttering its retail health clinics and its telehealth operation, joins rivals including drugstore giants CVS Health and Walgreens as well as grocery store chains that have been expanding their specialty pharmacy businesses. Walgreens next month is launching Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy, a $24 billion business that integrates a new pharmacy equipped to handle gene and cell therapies with its existing pharmacy assets including the large specialty pharmacy and home delivery business, AllianceRx.

In Walmart’s case, a “Specialty Pharmacy of the Community” is a Walmart-owned retail pharmacy with “specialty-trained pharmacy staff, a secondary specialty designation, and an offering consisting of condition-specific specialty services,” the company said. Unlike some rivals who have specialty pharmacies in hospitals and health systems or at locations different than their drugstores, Walmart is adding the specialty pharmacies inside stores.

Walmart already has dozens of pharmacies specialized for the needs of people with the HIV virus, so the additional auto-immune locations will bring a specialty pharmacy presence at 158 retail locations across the U.S.

“We have them in the stores – because when you think of the care for those conditions — we can also provide nutrition and over-the-counter products,” Aleata Postell, Walmart’s group director of specialty pharmacy, said in an interview. “We can bring everything together there.”

When it comes to the autoimmune category of treatments, such drugs in recent years have been some of the most costly to insurers and employers and include brands like Humira, Enbrel and Remicade as well as new less expensive biosimilar versions known to treat everything from autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and gastrointestinal conditions that include Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis to dermatological conditions that include psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.

“These new locations will continue to make this specialized care more accessible,” said Kevin Host, senior vice president of pharmacy at Walmart. “Since piloting this effort less than a year ago, our teams have seen the need and recognized how to impact the communities we serve in meaningful ways. I look forward to the incredible connections our pharmacists will make with our patients.”