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Big Questions Answered helps us understand important CVS Health initiatives by taking a closer look at new products, powerful innovations and the big changes the company is making to achieve its strategic imperatives and build a world of health around every consumer. The company's senior leaders answer big questions from host Matt McGuire.
Matt McGuire
Pharmacists are one of our most accessible healthcare providers. They're also one of our most trusted.
We see that trust in action when pharmacists serve as a community health resource for patients. They provide immunizations, dispense medications and council on prescription and over-the-counter drugs, helping ensure patients receive the best possible care.
On today's episode, we'll learn the impact trust has on pharmacy and patient care, why patients consistently rank pharmacists as one of their most trusted healthcare providers, and how the role of the pharmacist is transforming.
Welcome to Big Questions Answered, a podcast that helps us understand the important initiatives at CVS Health. I’m Matt McGuire from the Enterprise Communications team. I’ll be your host as we take a closer look at new products, powerful innovations and the big changes we’re making to achieve our strategic imperatives and build a world of health around every consumer. Thanks for joining me today as we get our big questions answered.
I’m here today with Lucille Accetta, Senior Vice President, Chief Pharmacy Officer, and Head of CVS Specialty operations.
As Chief Pharmacy Officer, Lucille advocates for elevating the role of pharmacy in health care to improve health outcomes and reduce the cost of care. And as Head of CVS Specialty operations, she leads the company’s specialty pharmacies, which support nearly 2 million patients with complex and chronic conditions.
Lucille, thank you for stopping by.
Lucille Accetta
Great to be here.
Matt McGuire
So as a pharmacist who's worked in the industry for some time, I imagine this is a job you enjoy. And at this point in your career, particularly in your new role as Chief Pharmacy Officer, I bet it's one that's personal, too. Can you tell me why you're so passionate about your work at CVS Health? And why the role of pharmacist is more important than ever.
Lucille Accetta
So Matt, I've been a pharmacist for a really long time and I at one point ran my own pharmacy for many years and I really know personally what it's like to have the role of a pharmacist in a community. And even though, like I was in a community working in my pharmacy, I knew I could most importantly impact more patients than I had. And that's why I really decided to create a new opportunity for myself and my career, go back to school, and landed in my role today at CVS Health. And I really feel that I'm able to drive so much more change across millions of patients across our entire enterprise. So it's been a real personal journey through the career that I've had to be now at CVS Health, as Chief Pharmacy Officer. And I feel that my mission for the organization and all of our pharmacists that we have more than 30,000 of them, is to advocate on their important role that they have in being accessible, health care providers and really championing the opportunity for them to practice at the top of their training and education. And, more importantly, as well as, to provide the kind of meaningful clinical care that we know our patients in the community really need and want from our pharmacists.
Matt McGuire
So that's wow, that personal journey, your experience as a community pharmacist and then coming to CVS to increase the positive change you were making. I love that. You really bring something special to your role. So, after looking at our annual industry reports from the last few years, I see that patients consistently rank pharmacists as some of the most trusted healthcare providers. I'm curious, why do you think that is?
Lucille Accetta
You know, Matt, our research shows that over 80% of adults say they truly trust their local pharmacist or even their pharmacy team. And I've seen this in action in our pharmacies. You see, our colleagues are living in the same neighborhoods that they're working in. They know their patients, their families. And at CVS Health, we've been serving patients where and where they need us most for over 60 years. And our pharmacists have been on the front line. Even if you think about COVID and immunizations, and even today with measles.
And you know, they even go further than that in their communities, like supporting natural disasters. And one of the examples I could think of is in the wake of Hurricane Helene, they were there at the front line in their communities. And I think this is where we become a trusted healthcare provider because we're there. Providing that high quality pharmacy care at times that are convenient for our patients.
Matt McGuire
So, I would absolutely agree with that, Lucille. And, speaking from personal experience, I'm one of those guys who interacts with pharmacists pretty frequently, especially when I'm picking up prescriptions for the family. They're always willing to look up a prescription or tell me when it will arrive or point me in the right direction when I ask about an over-the-counter cold or cough medicine. You know, pharmacists are really committed to helping patients.
Lucille Accetta
I saw that a lot. It's so interesting how patients just rely so much on the pharmacy, right? That's the most frequented healthcare facility that you think about on a on a monthly basis, weekly basis that most patients go to.
Matt McGuire
Yeah, absolutely. So, Lucille, I'm curious, why is it important for patients to trust their community pharmacists?
Lucille Accetta
So Matt, I looked up the definition of trust in the Cambridge English Dictionary. And to believe that someone is good, honest, provides safe and reliable service. A person in which confidence is placed. And I really believe with a firm commitment that trust is so important, especially in health care. It's so personal, and especially in a local community where the pharmacist can be that personal, a trusted advisor for our patients.
And recognizing trust isn't easily earned, right? You have to really have a relationship, and many of our pharmacists have decades long relationships with patients. They know their children, their grandchildren. They've been with them for a long time and have been able to help navigate some of the health care challenges that they have. And, as you know, pharmacists see their patients many times over than they do with many other providers in the health care system. And this type of relationship just continues to build trust, and when patients truly trust their pharmacist, their providers, they're more likely to be more open about what's happening in their health care and be a little bit more open about the challenges that they're facing. And that gives the pharmacist an opportunity to encourage them to see a provider. And I think that that's why we see patients so frequently coming into the pharmacy to talk to pharmacists, to ask questions and concerns about their health. And it truly does make a big difference. And I believe that CVS Health, our priority is that our patients have a great relationship with their pharmacists, and they are our biggest differentiators. These pharmacists really make a difference. And when they interact with us in a retail setting or by phone, patients are receiving a very personalized, high-quality care that they truly deserve.
Matt McGuire
Yeah, 100%, I agree. So, on last month's episode of Big Questions answered, I talked with Alfredo Martinez, the Associate Vice President and General manager of Hispanic Markets at CVS Health. And he highlighted the importance of having bilingual pharmacists at Navarro Discount Pharmacy and CVS Pharmacy y más stores. And he said, while many Spanish speaking customers also speak English, they're most comfortable when they're speaking their native language, especially when it's related to health care. He said it drives a sense of belonging, deeper connection. And to me, this is a part of customers trusting the pharmacists. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on this?
Lucille Accetta
It's such a great example of how working to meet patients where they are and understanding the unique needs of each of the local communities we serve. You know health care in general can be really challenging to navigate even without a language barrier. So that's why we really try to be sure that our pharmacy workforce is as diverse as the customers we're serving.
And I could give you a few examples to Alfredo's point. I was in the Florida area, and watched how one of our very long-standing pharmacists interacting with a Spanish population. And patients were coming up to her, at the counter, she was even going out into the aisle, talking to them in Spanish, showing them what to do with their the medication. It was a diabetic patient. Really taking the time to explain the diabetic unit, the insulin. And you could see the confidence that that individual had in this pharmacist because they were talking in Spanish and you could see the dialogue, the trust, the belief and the true relationship building that's going on there between these two individuals. And, you know, we just recently in listening to another one of our pharmacists who's working in the heart of Chinatown in Boston. He also was really able to connect with his patients because he really understood the cultural background. He felt he was always really able to help patients understand the medication in their own language and they helps them understand in a way that really makes sense to them. And that connection, again, another example builds a lot of trust in that pharmacist and in our brand at CVS Health. And, you know, we do also provide other ways of support around telephonic interpretation and translation lines. And we have over 200 languages, including American Sign Language and in our mobile app, we even have a program called Spoken RX tool that helps read to those with visual impairments. So I believe CVS Health has really looked at ways to be supporting patients from all areas, even within our own local communities and the languages that serve them all. And that all brings back the word trust in in our pharmacists.
Matt McGuire
Yeah, that is great. So, I can see the role of pharmacist is transforming, both as a patient and as a CVS Health employee. Can you outline some of the ways that it's happening at CVS Health?
Lucille Accetta
Oh yes, at CVS Health, we are on a true mission to fundamentally transform our pharmacist experience and the role of the pharmacy. This includes actually becoming the employer of choice by involving how we work to drive greater efficiencies and flexibility behind the bench. We have a couple of great examples of how we're transforming this work. One is with Smart DUR. This personalized DUR system that's very supportive to the pharmacist. A new phone call and intake process that's taking away the phones ringing while we're working and allowing us to respond back to patients very quickly through technology. And more dynamic way of working and sharing work across the region. So just those three new capabilities are evolving the workplace. We're also building on the important role that our pharmacy teams played during COVID, which is to create more opportunities for them to deliver clinical care and pharmacy health services that we know patients want and need. And obviously it's all our immunization work that these teams do in every single one of our pharmacies. Prescribing in certain states where they're allowed. Chronic disease management programs and our CMRs. And I think that in itself is just a start to many more new opportunities for our pharmacists.
And you know, I was just recently with an individual who shared that they were going on a business trip, and they needed to have a MMR, a measles, mumps, rubella vaccine. And they called their primary care provider, and they couldn't take them in until several months later. And this individual needed to be, you know, on a plane in a week. She was able to go into one of her CVS Pharmacies to be serviced by the pharmacist with an MMR. Was so thrilled with the experience and the accessibility and the flexibility of the timing, And that's why we're advocating even more in the public policy world, to continue to evolve, our local pharmacy regs so that we can continue to deliver even more services that our pharmacists are trained and want to deliver.
Matt McGuire
Yeah. So those are several amazing ways that pharmacist roles are transforming. And to kind of continue on that theme of transforming and evolving, and also just to wrap up our conversation, I'm curious, what would you say the future of pharmacy looks like?
Lucille Accetta
At CVS Health, we've had a really long, I would say, legacy of innovation and we've been practicing pharmacy and meeting patients where they are from more than 60 years. And, you know, businesses evolved over 60 years. But, really, what hasn't changed is the importance of that in-person pharmacist in our 9,000 community stores. And I think that's a true differentiator — the ability to connect in-person directly with our patient. And yet using technology, like I just shared with you, in many ways that we're trying to provide a very tech enabled approach to pharmacy, but that's powered by our pharmacists and the people in the pharmacy. So, using technology to help give more time to the pharmacists, right? And the interactions they need with their patients. We also know that we've got a large number of baby boomers hitting the retirement age, and we recognize that they, too, like that local accessible, affordable care, and that differentiating interaction with our pharmacist. And we're going to continue to really lean in into this approach that whether it's the ability to deliver more acute and our chronic care in one of our local pharmacies or having one of my CVS Specialty nurses be able to spend more time with the patient during a home visit, or even the ability for a patient to connect virtually with a pharmacist when they have questions about a drug, I see that being where we're going in the future. And because patients can often choose where they get their prescriptions filled, we're working hard to be their pharmacy of choice because our ability to meet them where they are with the care that they want and need every single time. So that's where I think we're focused for the future at CVS Health, and I truly believe the future is going to be bright.
Matt McGuire
Wow. Lucille, I can't wait for what's ahead. Thank you for stopping by today. I've had a great time talking with you. I really appreciate you stopping by.
Lucille Accetta
Thank you, Matt. It was great spending the time with you, too.
Matt McGuire
And a big thanks to you for tuning into this episode. Until next time, I'm Matt McGuire. I look forward to joining you again to get more Big Questions Answered.