Jon Roberts

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — When asked about the high points of his professional life, Roberts, who retired as CVS Health’s chief operating officer at the end of June, cites three pivotal moments — the Pharmacy Services Initiative he led in 2000; the development and deployment in 2005 of RxConnect, the technology platform that still powers the company’s prescription drug business; and the maturation and integration of the Caremark PBM in the early 2010s. Together, they helped solidify CVS Health’s position in community pharmacy and laid the groundwork for its future expansion into related fields.

“No matter what role I’ve been in, I’ve never worried about getting credit,” says Roberts, who started working at a drug store when he was in 10th grade and has held 15 different jobs over the ensuing years. “I’ve focused on working hard and doing the right thing for the company, the right thing for our customers and the right thing for our employees. That’s what motivates me.”

Roberts’ approach and contributions earned him the respect and admiration of his colleagues.

“Jon has left an indelible mark on CVS Health in his remarkable 43 years with our company,” says Karen Lynch, the company’s president and chief executive officer. “A common theme throughout Jon’s career has been his commitment to making CVS Health a better organization — driving growth, increasing innovation and  harnessing technology, as well as hiring and retaining top talent. Jon’s commitment to our company has been exceptional, and we are grateful for his leadership and service over the last four decades.”

Roberts knew early on that he wanted to be involved in health care.

“I was always interested in doing something in the medical field, but wasn’t sure whether it was going to be dentistry or medicine, and pharmacy seemed like it was a great place to start,” he says. “Once I finished up my pharmacy degree at the Medical College of Virginia [now part of Virginia Commonwealth University], I said this looks like a great profession — a combination of business and providing patient care and services. I was ready to go to work.”

Peoples Drug, a 500-store chain in the Mid-Atlantic states where Roberts worked while in high school, hired him as a pharmacist in 1979. After a decade of moving up through the ranks, Peoples was sold to CVS. “That deal closed in September of 1990,” Roberts recalls, “and I liked a lot of things that CVS did. I’ve always been a change agent, so I went into that acquisition with a lot of enthusiasm.”

The deal was a turning point for CVS (it put the company on the fast track to becoming a national pharmacy operator) and for Roberts, who was immediately given a regional pharmacy role in northern Virginia. He subsequently moved to Atlanta to oversee CVS’ debut there, and, following the acquisition of 2,500 Revco pharmacies in 1997, oversaw hundreds of stores, first in that region and then in the Northeast.

Roberts transferred to headquarters in 2001 when he was asked to run the new Pharmacy Services Initiative. “[Then chief executive officer] Tom Ryan felt like we needed to really step back and redefine pharmacy,” says Roberts. “We recognized that the industry had changed a lot and our service was not what it was supposed to be.

“As part of the Pharmacy Services Initiative, we reconfigured the physical pharmacy, we enhanced the technology, and we put in new workflow processes for pharmacy and scheduling. All of that was meant to deliver on the consumer’s expectation for service, and it was the most impactful enhancement to service that we’ve made in my career at CVS.”

Prior to the program, CVS’ growth in pharmacy trailed that of the industry leader by 600 basis points. After implementation, the company found itself with a 600-basis-point lead because of improved customer service and customer retention.

CVS took another big step forward four years later when Roberts put together a new team to run RxConnect, a project designed to modernize the company’s pharmacy system, which had been floundering for five years.

“That’s probably my most notable accomplishment as CIO,” he reflects. “At the time I got involved with it, RxConnect was not a product that could be deployed. We ended up taking the code, which we had the rights to, and made our first foray into offshore development. We looked worldwide for who could partner with us, and we ended up with TCS in India.

“We were able to redevelop the system and deploy it within a year and a half.”

Asked how he and his team were able to succeed where their predecessors fell short, Roberts says, “Just the way we approached things: It’s what’s the goal? Where are we at? And what resources do we need to accomplish the goal?”

One important aspect of RxConnect is flexibility. “We built it in a way that we knew we would have longevity,” notes Roberts. “It was an enabler of the clinical programs that we have today.

“As a pure play pharmacy retailer, for years we tried to figure out how to get into clinical programs. When we bought Caremark in 2007, they were much more advanced in pharmacy clinical programs than the retail industry was. So we were able to take that expertise, combined with being very close to the payer, and develop clinical programs that created value for consumers, for our clients, and for our payers, and ultimately helped us grow the PBM group and the CVS retail pharmacy group.”

Robert’s most high-profile assignment, prior to becoming chief operating officer of CVS Health in March 2017, was president of Caremark. He moved over to the PBM a year or so after it was acquired.

“Anybody that I’ve spoken to that’s gone in it from outside of the PBM industry, talks about the complexities and nuances that exist because of all the different types of payers — from employers to health plans to states to the federal government,” says Roberts. “I started in underwriting and trade, and was able to learn the business from the ground up.”

After serving two years as executive vice president of pharmacy purchasing, pricing and network relations at Caremark, Roberts was asked to become the PBM’s chief operating officer by Per Lofberg, who had been brought in to run the business.

“I really give Per the credit for turning Caremark around,” notes Roberts, recalling the period when some financial analysts were calling for the divestiture of the PBM, an idea firmly resisted by Larry Merlo, Ryan’s successor as CVS’ CEO. “Under Per we began to win new business.

“And then, back in 2010, Per and I both saw that specialty was going to be the future of pharmacy. So we invested early in specialty — technology, capabilities, programs and people. Those investments paved the way for us to become very innovative, and today we’re clearly the most successful specialty pharmacy.”

Roberts succeeded Lofberg as Caremark’s president in 2012, accelerating the expansion of the business to make it the nation’s biggest PBM. One key to Caremark’s rapid rise was the involvement of top management in interacting with clients.

“I was very hands-on in the sales process,” Roberts says. “I would go to meet with a lot of clients. Because I had such a strong operational background that gave us credibility in the eyes of our clients. That helped propel us forward.

During Roberts’ tenure as Caremark president, annual revenue grew from $80 billion to $130 billion. Organic growth accounted for the entire increase.

Caremark and its counterparts have drawn heavy fire from pharmacy operators, who claim that PBMs are unfairly driving down reimbursement rates. Roberts asserts that the criticism is unwarranted, overlooking the forest for the trees.

“There’s a misnomer that it’s the PBMs driving down reimbursement rates,” he says, “when in reality it’s market forces and competition. The process really starts with benefit consultants and the people who are paying for health care costs — employers and health plans. They create a competitive dynamic, and the PBMs participate in it.

“The PBM industry has continually evolved,” he says. “The total cost of care is going to be more important as we move forward, especially in pharmacy.

“That’s why we did the Aetna deal. We want to make more investments in clinical capabilities that can help employers and other payers manage risk. They’re looking for partners that can help them ensure that their members take better care of themselves, make better health care decisions, and ultimately lower overall health care costs. So that’s where we’re going to move in the future.”

Since becoming COO of CVS Health, Roberts has devoted much of his time to overseeing the development of the information technology essential to an omnichannel future. The company’s website, apps and, in the future perhaps, presence in the metaverse will tie its health care and retail offerings together, and connect them directly with the customer.

“Health care is all about access,” he notes. “We proved with our COVID testing and COVID vaccine programs that you can deliver health care services in the communities where people live and work, and they’ll come to a pharmacy for those health care services.

“So we’ve talked publicly about expanding into primary care. We’ll continue to grow our MinuteClinic and HealthHUB clinics. All of that’s going to be connected digitally and done in an omnichannel way. And by omnichannel, I mean that people can come to a physical store; they can go online and do a lot of things digitally; they can have products and services delivered to their home; or they can do a mix of those things, depending upon what’s important to them at the time.”

As noted, CVS Health’s response to the pandemic, which was spearheaded by Roberts, illustrates the benefits of capitalizing on synergies between the company’s digital and physical assets. “When we started doing COVID testing, all of our customers had to go through a digital front end and register, make an appointment and then come to a drive-through or to one of the kiosks we had outside of the stores,” he explains. “Then we would report their results digitally.

“We were doing thousands of tests a day at peak, and they were all coming through our digital front end. We had over 5,000 sites that we stood up within three months, and we were first to market by a wide margin.”

The difference made by CVS Health and other pharmacy operators in the battle against COVID-19 represents an inflection point for the profession, according to Roberts.

“But I do think that pharmacy has to take this opportunity and chart a path forward,” he says. “We need to keep the expanded scope of practice that the profession has been granted during the pandemic in place, and explore what other health care services (diagnostic testing, for example) that pharmacy can provide, and bring them closer to where people live and work. There are a lot of possibilities.”

Roberts is equally bullish about the future of CVS Health and the positive impact it will have on the well-being of patients and customers: “As consumers navigate health care today, the system is very fragmented, it’s very siloed. It’s not transparent, and very challenging from a billing and financial perspective. By connecting CVS Pharmacy, Caremark and Aetna, we have a 360-degree view of consumers’ health, which equips us to really solve a lot of the challenges that they face. We have a lot of assets that we can integrate to help consumers do a better job managing their health.”