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CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM | DECEMBER 19, 2022 | $3.50
Reinventing Walgreens There’s no playbook for the drugstore chain’s metamorphosis into a health care provider. But there are plenty of challenges. BY KATHERINE DAVIS
See WALGREENS on Page 30
VALERIE CHIANG
Walgreens Boots Alliance is betting its future on an unprecedented effort to reinvent itself as a health care company, a venture of immense scale and complexity. There’s no playbook for what the Deerfield-based company hopes to achieve. Never before has a retail pharmacy chain transformed into a full-fledged provider of medical care. Walgreens’ ambitions threaten to disrupt long-standing U.S. health care delivery structures, a status quo guarded by powerful entrenched interests. With a series of multibillion-
dollar investments and acquisitions, Walgreens is adding an array of services—including home health care and specialty pharmacy—to its existing drugstore network. But the strategy revolves around a bold and risky plan to attach doctor’s offices to Walgreens stores across the country. Walgreens has opened more than 150 store clinics in partnership with primary care provider VillageMD, with plans to reach 1,000 stores by 2027. “It is a giant, complicated undertaking,” says Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of
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A proposed solution to Chicago’s affordable housing crisis is to bring economical units to the historic financial hub. Is that idea a bridge too far? | PAGE 13 FIND THE COMPLETE SERIES ONLINE
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JOHN R. BOEHM
AT HOME ON LASALLE
CAREER READINESS
Readiness programs emerge to shepherd high school and college students into jobs that open a path to financial stability and wealth-building I PAGE 23
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BOOTH INSIGHTS
REAL ESTATE
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