Express Scripts opens $60M pharmacy automation center in St. Louis County
St. Louis Business Journal
June 3, 2010
by KELSEY VOLKMANN
Express Scripts opened its new $60 million pharmacy automation center Thursday in north St. Louis County.
The company added 300 new jobs at the 12-acre Technology and Innovation Center, which dispenses 500,000 pills per hour and packages and ships up to 110,000 prescriptions a day.
The facility is located at 4600 North Hanley Road in NorthPark, a 550-acre business park near the company's corporate headquarters on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The headquarters supports 4,000 workers.
Bel-Ridge, Mo.-based Express Scripts (Nasdaq: ESRX) is a pharmacy benefits manager that administers prescription drug programs for health plans, government and corporations. The company had also considered building the center in Bucks County, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia. But the company sought and won $3 million in Missouri BUILD bonds for the project and decided to stay in St. Louis.
NorthPark Partners, headed by Paul McKee Jr.'s McEagle Properties of O'Fallon, Mo., developed the site.
The new home delivery pharmacy at the center has an accuracy rate greater than 99.99 percent, up from 98.3 percent accuracy at ordinary retail pharmacies, Chairman, President and CEO George Paz said. "The difference may seem small, but it means that our three home delivery pharmacies nationwide eliminate 2 million drug errors each year as a result of our improved accuracy versus retail."
The center also includes a pilot pharmacy that will test innovative ideas to provide continuous improvement in home delivery, Paz said. "The pilot pharmacy focuses on improvements in patient safety, service consistency and lowering costs per prescription," he said. "It drives the evolution of the pharmacy of the future."
U.S. Senator Kit Bond, R-Mo., Gov. Jay Nixon, St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley and other government, community and business leaders celebrated the center's opening Thursday.
Express Scripts is poised to report $40 billion in revenue in 2010 following its $4.7 billion NextRx acquisition from WellPoint in December.
In April, Express Scripts bumped Emerson as the largest St. Louis company included in Fortune magazine's annual list of the 500 biggest U.S. corporations by revenue. Express Scripts reported $24.7 billion in revenue in 2009, up 12 percent from 2008.
