Corporate Research Group’s Weblog

As the folks at Medco and Express-Scripts dance in the halls, CVS Caremark eats crow.

The pharmacy benefit management operations of CVS Caremark – which has suffered billions of dollars in lost business – will take “slightly over a year” to recover now that it has rehashed its marketing message to emphasize its PBM capabilities rather than its ties to a retail drugstore chain, according to John Malley, pharmacy benefit consulting practice leader at Watson Wyatt.  Malley made the comments during a conference call sponsored by UBS. 

As previously reported (see prior post), CVS Caremark had been pushing its Maintenance Choice PBM product, which is designed to drive traffic to CVS stores in part by making 90-day prescriptions available at retail and offering price breaks.  The approach — which Malley says left clients “cold” — was part of chairman Tom Ryan’s vision that a combined PBM and drugstore chain could offer enhanced products, services and synergies. 

Now Malley says the PBM sales team is stressing the company’s ability to increase generic use, manage specialty drug trends, and most importantly to control overall healthcare costs through drug adherence regimens, personalized medicine and behavior change – similar to the aims of Medco’s Therapeutic Resource Centers and Express-Scripts’ Consumerology initiative.  “It really does read very much like…a Medco presentation but not too far departed from an Express-Scripts presentation,” says Malley of the new CVS pitch. 

Most surprising, Malley says, CVS is claiming its PBM unit was doing these things even before Medco and Express. “It’s almost like a trust me, trust me, wink type of thing,” he says.  But Malley notes, for example, that the concept of personalized medicine is widely considered an initiative from Medco, not CVS Caremark.  “Whenever a PBM changes their market message so dramatically and so frequently all the employer clients get a little anxious,” Malley says; “It indicates to them that….you’re A) playing catch-up; or B) are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.”

Or both.