No Middle Ground: Examining the Role of Drug Wholesalers in Patient Care

As a rule, there's not a lot of positive association with the word middle. Some of the more famous “middles” spring to mind:

Middle of the road.

Middle seat.

Stuck in the middle.

At best, middle seems average. At worst, it's irrelevant. 

That’s why it’s always given me pause when AmerisourceBergen and the other large pharmaceutical wholesalers are described as middlemen. It felt somehow diminishing to the difficult and crucial work we do. After all, who aspires to be in the middle? 

I’ve spent some time thinking about this recently alongside my colleagues in the global wholesaler industry—both the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers and GIRP (the European Healthcare Distribution Association) hosted events earlier this summer. 

Who aspires to be in the middle? I can say unequivocally… I do. Here’s why:

We're more than middlemen. We’re a marketplace.

Amazon isn’t a middleman. Neither are grocery stores, warehouse stores or other multi-line, multi-brand retailers. Fundamentally, these are places—either physical locations or online presences—that offer a single point of purchase where customers can meet specific needs. Warehouse clubs like Costco aggregate and optimize buying power for customers. Retailers like Target provide a channel that product makers can use to reach a broad audience. Pharmaceutical distributors like AmerisourceBergen serve a similar function in healthcare. 

Each day, tens of thousands of healthcare providers reach out to us as their primary source for the healthcare products they need to provide care to patients. We bring them convenience, reliability, security, selection. We make life easier for them. 

We're conscientious connectors.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers drive relentlessly toward the development of breakthrough products that give treatment options to patients. Their role is to create. Healthcare providers work tirelessly to improve their patients’ health. Their role is to care. Pharmaceutical distributors work at the center of it all. Our role is to connect, to help providers get the products they need for their patients. 

Imagine a world without pharmaceutical distributors and wholesalers—where each individual pharmacy, physician office and hospital across the United States would have to contract individually with each manufacturer for each product. Every aspect would have to be pored over: the price, the delivery logistics, credit terms, payment timing, rebate structures. Care would grind to a halt. 

Instead, providers order from their distributors today, and tomorrow’s delivery of medications enables patient care to remain efficient and accessible throughout our country. On the other side of the supply chain, manufacturers trust us as a partner in virtually every phase of product commercialization—knowing that our central position in healthcare gives us a unique, patient-focused perspective. 

This perspective continues to grow and mature, as well, through our expanding use of data. At a base level, that data includes inventory levels, customer order trends and compliance information, which are all crucial to manufacturer operations. Increasingly, it also includes more robust information, like how products are being used in the real world or insights that help providers purchase products more cost-efficiently. In all instances, we’re delivering actionable data to help our stakeholders manage their businesses more efficiently and expertly. That’s the power of connection.

We’re not a pass-through. We’re an innovation engine.

Because we’re working with tens of thousands of healthcare providers on a daily basis—and in some cases, have been serving them for decades—we’re able to listen to them constantly. The feedback and insights inspire us to create solutions that might not otherwise exist. 

Before Internet of Things entered the mainstream, we had already implemented networked inventory management cabinets to help physician practices and hospitals reduce their drug inventory costs without sacrificing their readiness to care for patients. And whether it’s through technologies or business coaching or marketing expertise, we continue to expand the way we help community health providers ensure local access to care. 

At the same time, the depth of our customer relationships allows us to advocate alongside them. We become another voice to help communicate financially complex, patient-critical issues to legislators and policy makers at the federal and state level.

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Together with the 20,000 associates at AmerisourceBergen, I’m proud to be deeply embedded in our industry-wide work of helping people access the healthcare products they need... helping create a more efficient healthcare delivery system... helping improve the way we all experience healthcare. 

This is important work. More to the point: It's work that's taken on most effectively when you're in the middle of it all.