VANCOUVER — Nearly nine months after it opened its first doctors’ office, Shoppers Drug Mart is recruiting more tech-savvy physicians to staff its growing roster of clinics—physical outposts it sees as part of its emerging connected-health strategy.
“We are interested in being a broad health player,” said Jeff Leger, president of Shoppers Drug Mart, in an interview with The Logic. Leger believes the Canadian health-care system could be easier to navigate, more convenient to access and better connected virtually. He’s betting his company, the country’s largest pharmacy chain, can help. “There’s a lot of gaps there that we think we can play a role [in filling].”
Talking Point
Shoppers Drug Mart wants to become “a broad health player,” said president Jeff Leger. The pharmacy chain’s parent company Loblaw acquired it in 2014 and has since been making more health and health-technology investments, including a stake in Maple and partnership with League. Now, Shoppers Drug Mart is expanding its new health clinics from three to at least seven in Ontario this year.
Shoppers has so far opened three of its new Health Clinics, all in Toronto, with plans to add at least four more this year. The centres will offer a range of services, including gynecology and testing for sexually transmitted infections.
In February 2020, the company took over an existing clinical space next to one of its Toronto Shoppers Drug Mart locations to house its first clinic. Leger called it a test of the company’s hypothesis that it could make healthcare more patient-friendly. Shoppers renovated the space in a bid to improve how people move around it and added new technology and virtual-care tools, such as an electronic medical records system and a touchscreen check-in process. That first clinic opened in August of last year, touted as a family practice that would use technology to make healthcare more accessible—a need made greater by the pandemic’s demands for physical distancing. “That thesis has played out. We’re very happy with how it’s gone,” Leger said.
At the time, the company planned to open two more clinics in the Greater Toronto Area over the course of a year. Those pilot sites—one near ritzy Yorkville and the other in the lower-income neighbourhood of Weston, each connected to a Shoppers location—have since opened for virtual visits only, due to the pandemic, with in-person service to be offered in the future. The company now has four more Ontario locations in the works for this year, with two in Ottawa and one each in Kingston and Whitby. (The company is hoping to secure a fifth location, but hasn’t finalized those details yet, according to a company spokesperson.) Leger declined to say how many clinics the company ultimately wants to open, but it plans to expand beyond Ontario as they “continue to build out some conviction around the model.”
Jeff Leger, president of Shoppers Drug Mart. Photo: Handout
The clinics fit the company’s broader connected health strategy, Leger said, based on a belief that “health care is going to be an omni-channel experience.” He thinks the pandemic’s acceleration of doctors and patients adopting virtual care proved that theory.
Leger said Shoppers’ first clinic demonstrated how quickly the company can teach doctors to use virtual tools. “The clinic that we took over … did not do virtual care. They did not do phone or video.” Their new model, a mix of virtual and in-person, speaks to the future, he said. “It’s obviously just one clinic, but we like that experience.”
Shoppers’ recruitment material for physicians seeks doctors “comfortable with technological advancements, digital innovation and telemedicine,” as well as “knowledge and use of [electronic medical records] systems” as preferred requirements. It adds that its clinics offer doctors “access to a full EMR/virtual technology suite” so they can streamline work and focus on patient care. “From online prescription management to in-clinic and virtual visits with our health care providers, we are caring and dedicated to supporting our customers and patients in new ways every day.”
Loblaw, Shoppers’ parent company, has been building up its health and health-tech portfolio for years. Originally a grocery and food company, in 2014 it bought Shoppers in a $12.4 billion deal. In 2016, it acquired QHR Technologies, a Kelowna, B.C.-based health-care technology provider. QHR’s products include Accuro electronic medical records and Medeo virtual care—both of which are deployed in the new Shoppers health clinics.
More recent investments have included Loblaw’s $75-million stake in Toronto-based telemedicine provider Maple, in a deal announced last September. A month later, Loblaw partnered with Toronto’s League. League’s telehealth platform powers Loblaw’s PC Health app, which connects users with a variety of health-care providers, such as nurses and dietitians. Users can also shop for health products and services earning points under the company’s PC Optimum loyalty program.
“We want to leverage technology to make it easier for people, for Canadians to access care,” Leger said, noting the connections between its digital plays and physical locations. The company views the app “as a digital front door to health care,” he said. A nurse, for example, could direct a user to a nearby walk-in appointment at one of Shoppers’ health clinics. “So there’s a link for sure.”
Wittington Ventures, a Loblaw-affiliated venture-capital firm, recently co-led a US$105-million fundraising round for Truvian. The San Diego-based company is working to create a blood-testing system that would quickly screen for a number of different tests from five drops of blood. Leger said he could see Truvian’s product in a pharmacy or clinic one day. “It would have application in both of our networks … We really like their technology.”
Physical technologies deployed in Shoppers’ clinics, of course, can link back to its digital platforms. Before the pandemic, Shoppers conducted more than 11million in-store blood pressure readings a year, and the company has started working on integrating that information into its app. “We can help people make decisions to get their blood pressure under control,” Leger said.
The company is “excited” about its strategy and the interplay between physical locations and technology, and how its first clinics are helping it test the omnichannel potential of healthcare, Leger said. “Although there’s a ton of bad things that happened during this pandemic, clearly—a huge human toll, economic toll. I think, from health delivery, we see this as an opportunity to really help formulate the new paradigm.”
