Besides that, though, we have a really terrific cluster of businesses in CareCentrix and in Shields where we’re adding value to payors in areas where they’re taking risk and where they’re looking for partnership. And those assets are, in my first glance, providing real value to the marketplace and have potential synergy with one another and with our retail pharmacy model. So again, backing all the way up though, again, there are a number of other things there. The clinical trials business that I mentioned in my prepared remarks, super interesting, leverages some of our assets, capital efficient. And I think that that’s the way I’ll zoom out here and just leave you with the thought that says, I don’t want to detail every asset we have. We’ve got lots of really good stuff.
We also have investments in things like VillageMD that we’re actively managing. But what I would say is this, the lens that we’re going to put on these things is, do they create sustained value for payors, patients, health systems, PBMs? And if they do, can we get a fair return for the capital that we’re going to invest in them? And if the answer is we can’t get a fair return, we’re not a charity, so we won’t do it. But I see a lot of opportunities for us to meaningfully create high return on capital investments in the services business. And that’s the — I think the headline I put out there is that we are going to evolve our services, our strategy, from a health care standpoint to a health services strategy, which I think a retail pharmacy basis for that.
I thought a PBM basis was terrific to build a health services business. I think a retail pharmacy base is a fabulous base to build a health services business from because of the engagement.
George Hill: Okay. And if I could have a quick follow-up. I guess, do you think of the care delivery business as kind of core to the business in the way you frame the person-to-person aspect?
Tim Wentworth: When you — would you define when you say care delivery?
George Hill: The Village and some of the assets?
Tim Wentworth: So we like that investment. We’re working closely with them. And as Manmohan mentioned in his prepared remarks, there’s no question that they have put themselves on a good path, both in terms of their costs and their footprint, getting to a place where they’re going to be meaningfully growing and profitable. So we like that as an investment. I think that as a future growth area for us beyond the village investment, which we’re very committed to, I would not expect to see us investing in additional primary care assets in our portfolio of investments.
George Hill: Very helpful color. Thanks, Tim.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Charles Rhyee from TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Charles Rhyee: Yes. Thanks for taking the question. And welcome, Tim, back. Tim, I wanted to touch on sort of your comments around specialty. Obviously, given you’re in specialty from your prior roles, would love to hear a little bit more about this. You talked a little bit extensively about it and potentially the path for Walgreens to be a significantly bigger player in this segment. If I’m not mistaken, I think Shields is one of the few specialty pharmacies that has sort of access to almost all the limited distribution specialty drugs in the market. And sort of — given sort of the shifting channel dynamics in this market over the next few years, particularly with, I would say, some ongoing regulatory scrutiny in this space, what kind of opportunities do you think this could create for Walgreens and Shields in particular? .
Tim Wentworth: Thanks. I’ll start and then I’ll actually let John speak a little bit more, because John has been very close to the Shields business, which has just been a terrific great management team and a great partner to health systems. First, let me clarify one thing, which is that actually we — Walgreens specialty have access to the limited distribution drugs and Shields has access to us. And so what Shields is able to do is actually work on behalf of the health systems to build networks and to manage the patients and the pharmacy programs that are really important to these health systems. If you look at their underlying economics, quite often, that can be many times the only place that they’re actually earning a profit.
And so we become a very, very important partner. Our Walgreens specialty assets inside that mix, I’ll speak to just for a second. We have community, a central fill. We are building a gene and cell therapy, because pharma has essentially indicated strong interest in working with us in that space. And so we think we’ve got great core assets. I think that one of the things that’s been underway, under John and Rick working together, has been really making sure that we’ve got those assets focused very, very pointedly on the payor market. And since I got here, we’ve had a number of wins where we were put into the network of large Blue Cross Blue Shield regional plans as a participant. That’s not sufficient from where I’m sitting, though. We’ve got to be able to win more than our fair share of those patients based on the service that we provide, the cost we can deliver.
And we’re working through sort of our models to figure out what we need to do to enhance our access to patients. That being said, though, Shields is a key enabler to a specialty strategy as a potential component for these pharmacies. And John, if you want to just give any additional color there?
