• 15 Sep, 2025
• Dr. Mahdi Khazaei

Pharmacies Are Becoming Canada’s New Front Door to Primary Care

The business logic is simple. Canada has a shortage of family doctors in many communities, and provincial governments have been expanding what pharmacists are allowed to do. When scope grows, the value of a pharmacy’s square footage grows with it. A consultation room that once sat empty can become a profit centre. A pharmacist’s clinical time can be billed through public or private channels, depending on the service and province, which turns a historically low margin retail business into something steadier and more service based. The payoff is not only today’s clinic fee. Every clinical visit tends to drive a bundle of high margin add ons that retailers already know how to monetise, from vaccinations to over the counter products, and it builds loyalty with customers who have heavy health needs.

Policy is blowing in the same direction. In 2025 Ontario signalled another expansion of pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments, part of a wider push to take pressure off emergency rooms and family practices. Research suggests the public is ready. A national Leger survey this spring found Canadians increasingly view pharmacists as frontline providers who can safely take on more assessment and prescribing work, which matters when you are betting on long term adoption rather than a one time pandemic surge.

For Loblaw, which owns Shoppers, the strategy helps diversify away from food margins that can swing with inflation and competition. Health and wellness already underpin loyalty programs and private label sales. Adding clinical services deepens those ties, keeps foot traffic predictable through the week, and creates reasons to visit the store that do not rely on discounting. It also positions the company for direct contracts with employers and insurers who want quicker access for their members, especially for routine care that does not need a physician visit. The Surrey rollout is a local story, but it is also a template. If unit economics hold up, clinics can be replicated across urban and suburban locations where the company already controls real estate and staff.

The move will not go unchallenged. Telus Health has spent the past few years building a national employer wellbeing platform and virtual care network. Its Workplace Options acquisition added millions of covered lives and deeper relationships with HR teams that could become a distribution channel for in-person care. WELL Health, a consolidator of medical clinics and digital platforms listed on the TSX, reported record quarterly revenue in August and its first quarter with more than one million patient visits in Canada, a sign that hybrid models still have plenty of room to grow. In other words, the fight for the front door is on. Pharmacies bring convenience and location. Tech enabled clinic groups bring depth of care and physician networks. Employers are an important swing voter because they influence where workers go for first contact care.

Investors should think about this shift the way retailers think about store layout. Clinical rooms reclaim underused space and draw customers deeper into the box. A pharmacy care visit creates predictable traffic patterns that can be planned around, which improves labour scheduling and inventory turns. The data flywheel spins faster because clinical interactions add context to retail baskets. That opens the door to targeted programs for chronic conditions, loyalty offers that tie to adherence, and integrated online booking that keeps customers in a closed loop. None of this requires a moonshot technology breakthrough. It requires execution, consistent scope of practice, and a steady pipeline of trained pharmacists and nurse practitioners.

There are risks that deserve attention. Staffing is the most obvious one. Pharmacy teams have shouldered heavy workloads since the pandemic, and clinics add more demands to a finite number of clinicians. If staffing falls behind growth, service quality slips, and the reputational hit can be hard to reverse. Reimbursement is another wildcard. Provinces pay for some services and not others, and rate cards can change with budgets. Investors should watch for signs that provinces lock in sustainable fees for assessments and prescribing, since that underpins return on the fit-out of clinic rooms and the added payroll. Physicians will also have views. Many welcome pharmacists taking minor cases off their desks, but professional tensions can surface if the line between routine care and more complex management blurs.

The competitive backdrop in the United States offers a cautionary tale and a contrast. Major chains south of the border spent big to bolt clinics onto pharmacies, then pulled back as costs and utilisation failed to match optimistic models. Walgreens’ VillageMD strategy has been unwound, and recent reporting suggests the company’s new owners are exiting primary care and planning more store closures, which has raised questions about access and the viability of clinic-inside-a-pharmacy economics when payer mixes are tough. Canada is not the United States. Payment systems, pharmacy ownership rules, and patient expectations differ. Even so, the lesson travels. Clinics need the right mix of services, reliable funding, and clear operational guardrails to succeed at scale.

If you zoom back out, the Surrey launch reads like a small but telling signal. Primary care is getting closer to where people already are, inside grocery anchored plazas and high street corners. That is good for patients who want same day access for straightforward problems. It is good for health systems that need to protect scarce physician time. It can be good for investors who understand that a retail box can become a clinic without turning into a hospital. The trick is to remember that health is still a service business. Outcomes and experience will decide which models scale. The companies that pair simple access with disciplined operations are likely to be the ones still opening clinics a year from now.

Sources

Shoppers Drug Mart opens seven Pharmacy Care Clinics in Surrey, press release, 12 Sep 2025: https://www.loblaw.ca/en/shoppers-drug-mart-officially-opens-doors-to-seven-pharmacy-care-clinics-in-surrey-bc/

Yahoo Finance repost of Shoppers Surrey clinics announcement, 12 Sep 2025: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shoppers-drug-mart-officially-opens-160000509.html

Leger, Pharmacists’ expanding role in Canadian healthcare, 2 Apr 2025: https://leger360.com/market-intelligence-pharmacists-expanding-role-in-canadian-healthcare/

MAPflow summary of Ontario’s 2025 pharmacist prescribing expansion signal, 25 Feb 2025: https://www.mapflow.ca/blog/new-ailments-coming-soon-in-ontario

WELL Health reports record revenue and more than one million Canadian patient visits in Q2 2025, 14 Aug 2025: https://news-releases.well.company/news-releases/well-health-reports-record-revenue-adjusted-ebitda-and-adjusted-net-profit-in-q2-2025-upgrades-guidance-and-delivers-first-ever-quarter-with-more-than-1-million-patient-visits-in-canada/

Telus Health acquires Workplace Options and announces GTCR partnership, 13 to 14 May 2025: https://www.telus.com/health/press-releases/telus-health-acquires-workplace-options-top-provider-wellbeing-services-fortune-500-companies

Walgreens pullback coverage, 2 to 5 Sep 2025: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2025/09/02/with-walgreens-exiting-primary-care-villagemd-has-hundreds-of-sites-to-sell/ and https://www.healthcare-brew.com/stories/2025/09/05/walgreens-private-equity-takeover-layoffs-pharmacy-closures