The Chief of CVS Health Wants to Be Part of People’s ‘Everyday Life’

I stepped back and said, “What is our true purpose of the company?” What I want to do is make sure that people have access to high-quality, affordable health care, and that we as a company can help people navigate the health care system. Because we’re so central in people’s lives, we have the ability to be even more central in people’s lives. That’s the mark I really want to make, is to be part of someone’s everyday life where if they’re healthy, they’re engaging with us to stay healthy. If they have health issues, they’re engaging with us so that we can help manage and navigate that.

Can you give me give me some examples?

Well, let’s just start with a pandemic, right? So you come to CVS for your test and we started that, you know, way back when you come to CVS for your vaccines. We have done virtual primary care as a change in how people think. We’ve added behavioral health specialists to our stores, which is really different. We’re going to move into the expansion of health care services. I don’t want people to think about CVS Health as just that drugstore. I want them to think about it being a health care company.

How big of a problem is shoplifting for your stores right now?

There are certain parts of the country that are worse than others, but it’s not having a material impact on our financial results. It is a safety issue, however, for our employees. So one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve made more investments in security.

How is the labor shortage affecting the company? Are you having a hard time hiring people?

It is a big challenge for us. We have increased our wages. We paid pharmacy bonuses in the past year. We’ve done big hiring days. But it is a constant balance and a constant battle.

You said you were going to raise your minimum wage to $15 an hour by this summer. Is that right?

We put it in in phases. So we’ve been rolling it out over time, and I don’t know that it’s enough. We obviously moderate wages in different parts of the country and I’m going to continue to evaluate it.

What do you see as the most effective ways that we could reduce health care costs for everyday Americans? And what’s your company’s role in doing that?

There’s a couple of things. One is there’s the site of care. Our role is offering an alternative site of care, either in our retail locations, or in the home with virtual connections. We’re entering into the primary care space because we believe that primary care has real significant influence over the cost of health care.