How Is Walgreens Advancing Cancer Care for Patients?

Matt Farber, MA, Senior Director of Patient Care and Advocacy at Walgreens discusses some of the ways that Walgreens is advancing care for patients with cancer.

Transcript

Some of the things that Walgreens is doing to advance care for cancer patients is really a number of them. The first and probably most important is that, again, we are seen as the extension of the care team. That we are there along with the doctor, the nurse, the social worker, and the navigator to help the patient navigate through their care. And I think that, the best way to think about that is that we’re treating the patient, not the prescription, and that we view this as a journey. From education and prevention to active treatment and into survivorship. And there’s a role the pharmacy can play in all of that and Walgreens is playing an active role. The most important thing obviously is that we can help patients get access to their medication, stay on their medication, afford their medication and that’s what we do every day. And that’s something that we’re incredibly good at and we’re very proud of that. And we do that in a variety of ways. We have certainly our retail network of 9000 plus stores, but we also have our local specialty locations. We have over 300 of those and 76 of those are actually specialized in cancer care, which we’re very very excited about. And then we also have our central fill capabilities so we can really get to the patients wherever they are. And then finally I referenced earlier the journey that cancer patients go through including survivorship and side effect management. We just launched a new program called Feel More Like You that helps patients manage through their side effects. So it brings resources for patients into the retail settings at over 3000 of our stores to help patients manage through those side effects.