CVS Health is the United States’ largest pharmacy health care provider. Their mission is to reinvent pharmacy to having a more active, supportive role in each person’s unique health experience and in the greater health care environment—from advising on prescriptions to helping manage chronic and specialty conditions to providing quality walk-in medical care and pharmacy benefits management.
CVS Health opened its first store in 1963 and was known as Consumer Value Stores. They then sold health and beauty products. The company was founded in Lowell, Mass. by brothers Stanley and Sidney Goldstein, and partner Ralph Hoagland. Throughout the 60s they grew to 17 stores and opened their first store with a pharmacy department. During the 1970s, they grew to over 200 stores, acquiring stores from Clinton Drug & Discount and Mack Drugstores; they also hit $100 million in annual sales in 1974. In the 1980s they broke ground on the store support center in Woonsocket, RI, which still in 2015 is where their company headquarters belongs. By the end of the 1980s they had nearly 750 stores and had reached $1.6 billion in sales. In the 90s they had acquired more than 3200 stores from Arbor Drugstores, People’s Drug, and “the largest acquisition in the history of the U.S. retail pharmacy industry” from Pevco. They now claimed stores in the Midwest along with the east coast and were breaking ground in the south. In this time frame they also launched the program known as Pharmacare, a pharmacy benefit management company that provided a wide range of services for employers and insurers. In the early 2000s they opened their first MinuteClinic. They acquired 1260 stores from Eckerd as well as their $1 billion mail order and pharmacy benefits management businesses and distribution centers. They later acquired 700 stores between Sav-On and Osco, making CVS #1 in fast growing