Walmart and Amazon speed up home delivery of prescription drugs

America’s two largest retailers, Walmart and Amazon want to deliver prescriptions to your doorstep in as little as a few hours as competition in the drugstore business is getting more fierce.

CVS Health and Walgreens delivers on the same day nationally and has done so for years, but the fast delivery trend for prescriptions is growing as traditional drugstores close and more people use telemedicine or subscription-based care that encourages regular deliveries. Shopping habits do change over time.

Instacart got into prescription deliveries during the COVID-19 pandemic when it started delivering for Costco Wholesale. The grocery delivery company has since launched same-day delivery services for Wegmans Food Markets and Publix Super Markets.

Amazon expects to offer same-day prescription deliveries to nearly half of its U.S. customers by the end of this year. It’s adding 20 small pharmacies to distribution centers around the country to improve delivery speeds. It also opened 10 prescription processing centers in the past few years. “We’re building a modern pharmacy, what we like to think of as a pharmacy in your pocket,” Hannah McClellan Richards, VP of operations, product and technology at Amazon said last fall.

Walmart expanded same-day deliveries earlier this year to every state except North Dakota, where it has no pharmacies. Walmart customers can get their medicines along with groceries or other merchandise in one same-day delivery. According to Kevin Host, PharmD, pharmacy senior vice president at Walmart, prescription deliveries were the top thing customers requested when surveyed by the company.

It's not your grandmother's drugstore any more when it comes to prescriptions.

Read more: More pharmacies offer to speed prescription deliveries to customers (Associated Press)