Walgreens plans to close a “significant portion” of underperforming stores and lower its stake in primary care provider VillageMD, a shift away from the pharmacy chain’s previous strategy to transform into a “consumer-centric” healthcare company.

While executives didn’t specify an exact number of stores it would shutter, Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth said during the company’s Q3 2024 earnings call on June 27 that it could close up to 25% of the chain’s roughly 8,600 stores over the next three years.

The decision to close the stores—which Wentworth said are “underperforming”—comes after the company’s earnings fell short of analysts’ expectations: Walgreens reported a $13.1 billion operating loss for the first nine months of FY2024 and lowered its 2024 profit forecast from $3.20–$3.35 per share to $2.80–$2.95 per share.

“We are at a point where the current pharmacy model is not sustainable, and the challenges in our operating environment require we approach the market differently,” Wentworth said on the earnings call.

A challenging environment

By February of this year, Walgreens had already closed 625 of its stores, the New York Times reported, and the company later announced it would shut 160 VillageMD primary care clinics after reporting a nearly $6 billion net loss in Q2 2024 earnings.

Keep reading here.—MA

What does the future of healthcare look like? Well, we don’t have the full picture, but we do know where you can go to get a good look at how the industry is innovating.

Don’t miss HLTH, the must-attend event for health and innovation leaders, focused on the theme “boldly stepping into health’s future.” This year, they'll be taking over the Venetian Expo Center in Las Vegas from October 20–23.

Get your in-person ticket to access HLTH’s content, which will include new tracks, such as:

• AI Pavilion: Experience live interactive demonstrations around use cases for AI in healthcare.
• Nurses @ HLTH: Elevate the voices of nurses and nurse leaders.
• Food as Medicine: See how nutrition and healthcare go hand in hand.

Tap in to the latest trends in healthcare. Get your ticket today.

Welcome to Making Rounds, where we spotlight voices from across the healthcare industry. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

This edition of Making Rounds spotlights Neil Batlivala, co-founder and CEO of Pair Team, a startup that works to connect underserved communities to healthcare services. Batlivala talked with Healthcare Brew about how Pair Team partners with nonprofits, what healthcare services the team provides, and how the company’s business model works.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What does Pair Team do?

We build telemedicine clinics on-site at nonprofits. We go to housing providers—like shelters or transitional or adult-living facilities—we go to food pantries; we go to sobering centers. And we help bring clinical capabilities to these more underserved communities to help connect them to high-quality care.

How we do that is a combination of upskilling and workforce development. We actually train the staff at our nonprofit partners to provide the services. This gives them a new revenue stream, so it can be very impactful from not just a mission perspective to provide more services to clients, but also to give them access to what we call an earned revenue model…and then we equip them with [things] like an iPad for telemedicine services, wireless blood pressure cuffs, glucometers, weighted scales.

We’re focused initially right now in California. We’re close to 140, 150 [employees]. A bulk of the workforce is the care team…community health workers, nurse practitioners, primary care providers, licensed clinical social workers, registered nurses.

Keep reading here.—MA

Learn from the best. Get exclusive career advice from entrepreneur and comedian Nurse Blake, thanks to Indeed. Read up on six nursing strengths to highlight on your résumé + level up your career with tips, including how to get the most out of short-term career goals in healthcare. Explore the articles.