CVS CVS Health Corporation

By Sharon Terlep 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (March 21, 2018).

CVS Health Corp. tapped a former Eli Lilly & Co. finance chief to run its pharmacy benefit business as the drugstore giant works to complete an acquisition of insurer Aetna Inc.

Derica Rice, a longtime Eli Lilly chief financial officer, is set to take over at CVS Caremark on March 30, according to an internal CVS memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Rice will succeed Jonathan Roberts, who was promoted last year to the role of chief operating officer at CVS Health.

"With growing concerns over the affordability of prescriptions, the role of the pharmacy benefit manager has never been more important to the health care system," CVS said in the memo, announcing the appointment to managers.

Pharmacy benefit managers are health-care middlemen who help select which drugs are covered for insured patients and negotiate discounts with drugmakers.

CVS, with its $69 billion deal for Aetna, aims to create a vertical health-care enterprise in which pharmacists are central to patient care and the company's vast network of drugstores will provide services from lab testing to the infusion of specialty medications. The deal, which was announced in December, is awaiting regulatory approval.

Mr. Rice worked at Lilly for about 27 years, serving as finance chief from 2006 until retiring in December. He was interim CEO at the Indianapolis drugmaker for a few months in 2013 when then-CEO John Lechleiter took a medical leave.

Mr. Rice helped craft Lilly's strategy to weather a period of patent expirations for top-selling drugs that caused the company's sales to decline sharply in 2014. The company cut costs and licensed rights to new drugs to help offset some of the sales decline.

Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 21, 2018 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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