Dive Brief:

• Rite Aid Corporation announced Monday its Rite Aid Health Alliance program, which will provide comprehensive care to patients with chronic health conditions.

• The program is an integrated-care model that leverages the expertise of pharmacists as well as partnering physicians. Many chronic conditions, like diabetes, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are controlled with medication and require regular monitoring.

• Rite Aid piloted the program in several U.S. cities and provided 2,300 health care visits to some 1,500 patients.

Dive Insight:

Like its rival CVS Caremark, Rite Aid Corporation is delving deeper into the health care arena. Drugstores are well positioned to expand in this area​, employing pharmacists with unique health care expertise and connections to patients. These stores have also long provided some basic health care like vaccines and tests. Two other variables are making this kind of investment more attractive: Baby Boomers are increasingly encountering a host of new health care needs, many of them chronic conditions, and many more Americans have health care benefits thanks to the Affordable Care Act. We will likely see more of this kind of innovation from pharmacy chains, and possibly also from the doctors, health care clinics, and hospitals that will increasingly become those drugstores’ competition.