DEERFIELD, Ill. & BALTIMORE, June 27, 2013 - A new Walgreens store is being developed adjacent to the Johns Hopkins East Baltimore medical campus, which will offer new health and wellness programs and services for students and staff, as well as residents of the surrounding community. The store marks a significant expansion of a unique collaboration between Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) and Walgreens (NYSE: WAG) (Nasdaq: WAG) first announced in May 2011, to collaborate and explore the development of new models for improving overall patient care.
The new Walgreens “Well Experience” store will offer health services, as well as healthy food options and a full selection of other daily living products. In addition to its pharmacy, the store will bring other health care resources to the community with a new Take Care Clinic, staffed by board-certified nurse practitioners, marking the first Walgreens in-store retail clinic in the state of Maryland.
The store will be located at Science and Technology Park adjacent to the Johns Hopkins medical campus. The park is being developed by Forest City - New East Baltimore Partnership. Construction is expected to begin in July with the planned opening in late November.
“This is a significant next step in our relationship, leveraging the clinical expertise of Johns Hopkins Medicine and Walgreens expansive health care resources to create a retail hub for community-based care,” said Kermit Crawford, Walgreens president of pharmacy, health and wellness. “Our pharmacy and Take Care Clinic will provide an environment for collaborative health care innovation, while also providing greater access to health care services for the Johns Hopkins community, students, employees and patients. This new venture is another way in which we’re advancing community pharmacy to help more people get, stay and live well.”
With an emphasis on population health and wellness, the Walgreens store plans to introduce a number of programs in collaboration with Johns Hopkins Medicine faculty, including:
- Student health services – clinical, pharmacy and retail products and services
- Take Care Clinic – with extended evening and weekend hours, providing assessment, treatment and management of certain chronic conditions, as well as care for minor illness and injuries, immunizations, preventive health screenings/counseling and more
- Chronic disease education and awareness programs
- Smoking cessation programs
- HIV testing – part of a Walgreens program supporting people living with HIV/AIDS, offering accessible health and wellness guidance and testing programs/services
- Immunizations, including those for travel
Patricia M.C. Brown, JD, president of Johns Hopkins HealthCare, says, “These programs will provide a novel approach to population health and medical services. They will benefit not only Johns Hopkins employees and the surrounding community, but also form the level of health care collaboration that could serve as a national model.”
The Walgreens “Well Experience” retail concept supports the company’s efforts to transform the role of community pharmacy and re-engineer health care delivery in the U.S., while also providing a more personalized health care experience. With pharmacists out from behind the counter and positioned in front of the pharmacy, they are more accessible to customers and patients to provide one-on-one consultations, address medication questions and concerns and more.
According to Paul Rothman, MD, dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, “Our collaboration with Walgreens creates the opportunity to offer innovative, locally-based health care services while further weaving Johns Hopkins Medicine into the fabric of East Baltimore. We will also use the lessons learned from this collaboration beyond our community, as Johns Hopkins Medicine continues to set the standard for medical education, research and patient care on a national scale and around the world.”
Johns Hopkins physicians will collaborate with nurse practitioners at the Take Care Clinic, and will be available during clinic hours for consultation. Johns Hopkins also has a collaborative practice agreement at a Take Care Clinic in Washington, D.C.
“We have been working with Walgreens for more than a year to develop collaborative approaches to population-based research which utilize the strengths of both organizations to improve health outcomes for patients,” says Jeanne M. Clark, MD, interim director of the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “The opening of the new Walgreens store increases our potential to advance population health in the community and across the country and is a mechanism to expand our relationship with Walgreens.”
Take Care Clinics are open seven days a week, with extended evening and weekend hours, and offer walk-in availability as well as same-day online appointment scheduling. The clinics are located in 20 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. are staffed by board-certified nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
“We’re proud to expand our relationship with Johns Hopkins to coordinate care at our first Take Care Clinic in Maryland,” said Alan E. London, M.D., chief medical officer, Take Care Clinics. “Through clinical collaborations, we’re able to facilitate more coordinated health care services, which are key to improving patient care and access.”
About Walgreens
As the nation's largest drugstore chain with fiscal 2012 sales of $72 billion, Walgreens (www.walgreens.com) vision is to become America’s first choice for health and daily living. Each day, Walgreens provides more than 6 million customers the most convenient, multichannel access to consumer goods and services and trusted, cost-effective pharmacy, health and wellness services and advice in communities across America. Walgreens scope of pharmacy services includes retail, specialty, infusion, medical facility and mail service, along with respiratory services. These services improve health outcomes and lower costs for payers including employers, managed care organizations, health systems, pharmacy benefit managers and the public sector. The company operates 8,096 drugstores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Take Care Health Systems is a Walgreens subsidiary that is the largest and most comprehensive manager of worksite health and wellness centers and in-store convenient care clinics, with more than 700 locations throughout the country.
About Johns Hopkins Medicine
Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM), headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, is a $6.7 billion integrated global health enterprise and one of the leading health care systems in the United States. JHM unites physicians and scientists of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with the organizations, health professionals and facilities of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. JHM's mission is to improve the health of the community and the world by setting the standard of excellence in medical education, research and clinical care. Diverse and inclusive, JHM educates medical students, scientists, health care professionals and the public; conducts biomedical research; and provides patient-centered medicine to prevent, diagnose and treat human illness. JHM operates six academic and community hospitals, four suburban health care and surgery centers, more than 38 primary health care outpatient sites and other businesses that care for national and international patients and activities. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, opened in 1889, was ranked number one in the nation for 21 years by U.S. News & World Report.
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