Hal Leaves Walgreens and Take Care Health

Last Friday Walgreens issued a press release announcing that Hal Rosenbluth, president of the company’s Health and Wellness Division, will be retiring in April. His retirement will come almost four years after Walgreens acquired Take Care Health, the company Hal and Peter Miller founded in 2004. Peter Miller left Walgreens/Take Care last May.

Although the announcement came without warning to those of us on the outside, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. To say Hal doesn’t need a job at Walgreens is like saying a Buddhist monk doesn’t need a new cell phone every two years. He is independently wealthy, the result of some extraordinary business accomplishments. With no disrespect to Walgreens and his executive peers, climbing the corporate ladder was not his source of inspiration.

He wanted to change health care and saw an opportunity to do that with the largest retail drug store chain in the world.

His was a noble effort. That he stuck it out at Walgreens for four years is a testament to what he was trying to accomplish. It is also a statement about his commitment to those at Take Care who stuck it out with him along the way. But it makes complete sense that he would move on.

You could write a book about what Peter and Hal overcame in building Take Care: raising money during a not so happy investment climate; a flop with its first retail partnership in Portland, OR; the CVS takeover of Osco stores in Kansas City; the SSM and Advocate health system partnerships that exploded over physician resistance.

The big question is what happens to Take Care now that he and his partner in crime, Peter Miller, are both gone. The retail clinic part of Take Care Health, internally known as the Consumer Services Group (CSG), has been part of a large public company for four years. The work site clinic part, called the Employer Services Group (ESG), has been there for three years. Those business models must compete for resources and perform just like every other program at Walgreens. The argument that Take Care enhances Walgreens' earnings by adding new prescription customers only goes so far. Margins are looked at under a microscope every quarter. Sink or swim with everyone else. The investor community is breathing down your neck. Add to that a growing threat from virtual medicine services (see our latest market report at http://www.merchantmedicine.com) and you can see this will not be an easy road.

So much for changing health care.