Cure CVS: From Low Quality to High Prices, CVS Is Failing Our Communities
From the Executive Summary:
CVS is a retail-healthcare colossus. The company fills or manages over a billion prescriptions a year—30 percent of prescriptions written in the United States—and is the country's biggest purchaser of prescription drugs. It has more drugstores than any other chain—some 6,800—selling everything from soup to shampoo and eyeliner to vitamins, along with prescription and over-the-counter medications.
CVS’s growth has come at a high price for many of the communities in which CVS operates. The company's mission is "to improve the lives of those we serve by making innovative and high-quality health and pharmacy services safe, affordable and easy to access." But, according to the results of a 14-month investigation, CVS actuallyfails to provide equal and fair access to its services, based on analyses of several key measures. And regulators have raised concerns about quality, overcharges, privacy protection and safety related to CVS.
CVS fails to provide equal access: Nationwide, CVS locates many fewer stores per person in communities of color than in mostly white areas. CVS also locates more stores per person in the most affluent communities than in those where lower-income people live. In contrast, Walgreens and Rite Aid actually locate more stores per person in less affluent areas across the country. In addition, in several metropolitan areas, CVS has demonstrated a pattern of closing stores in lower-income areas and in communities of color only to open stores in more well-to-do or whiter areas already saturated with pharmacies.
CVS focuses anti-theft measures on communities of color: CVS’s anti-theft measures signal distrust of people of color. At hundreds of stores across the country in communities of color, CVS displays condoms in locked cabinets that require customers to summon CVS staff to unlock them and monitor customers while making their selections. CVS’s two main competitors do not lock up condoms. And in five metropolitan areas surveyors found additional disparities between the anti-theft measures CVS employs in white areas and in areas with a majority of people of color.
CVS may not offer a fair price: In Florida, Massachusetts and Illinois, government consumer protection watchdogs have found that CVS’s advertised prices do not always match reality and have recently cited CVS for overcharging consumers. In addition, surveys in key markets found that CVS charges more than the competition for a basket of common items.
CVS’s questionable products and services: CVS has repeatedly been caught with expired infant formula, out-of-date medicines and other expired products on its shelves. Various products it sells under the CVS brand are sourced from companies that manufacture products in or buy ingredients from overseas factories that the FDA rarely inspects, and that have been subjects of numerous regulatory actions and warnings in recent years because of quality control lapses.
CVS’s failure to protect private information: Consumers may expect that when they leave a CVS store with prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines and other personal items, it is the end of the transaction. In fact, it is just the beginning. CVS analyzes customers’ medical histories and buying patterns to design targeted sales pitches. It sells some of its purchase data to companies that in turn sell the information to drug manufacturers for marketing purposes. And CVS has a record of making private information vulnerable to identity theft that has prompted action by three Attorneys General.
CVS’s press for profit may put patient care at risk: Pharmacists report that CVS closely monitors statistics such as the number of prescriptions a pharmacy fills; the speed with which they fill prescriptions; and the amount of time it takes to answer the pharmacy phone. CVS pharmacists say management has been mandating higher prescription volume targets without adding staff. This approach has raised the hackles of some regulators. The Massachusetts Pharmacy Board entered into a settlement agreement with CVS in 2006 after substantiating 62 complaints involving medication errors and other problems. The board brought in outside experts to review the way CVS runs its pharmacies, and the experts suggested that CVS’s focus on prescription volume and other statistics might value "speed above safety."
