CVS Health recently launched a re-engineered smartphone app that hopes to make the consumer experience better, according to the Wall Street Journal. It includes prescription refill ordering by scanning a prescription package barcode and tools that offer more prescription price transparency. It also has a feature for scheduling appointments at MinuteClinics, video visits with a provider, and checking insurance coverage. Customer reward points and benefits are streamlined in the new CVS app interface. Also just recently, Walgreens began working with WebMD on a digital health platform that creates wellness and lifestyle goals for consumers who can use app rewards to purchase or refill prescriptions at Walgreens stores. These apps were designed to retain customer loyalty for the flagging pharmacy retailers.
Patient point of entry: “The battle over the ‘starting line’ of the patient’s healthcare journey is intensifying,” says Alan Ayers, President of Urgent Care Consultants and Senior Editor of JUCM. “Just as urgent care has long positioned itself as a patient’s provider of first resort when a health episode arises, pharmacy chains, local health systems, branded scheduling apps, and others are vying for patients’ top of mind awareness. Urgent care is put in a position of having to eclipse these other starting points or otherwise somehow connect to these other channels.”
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