Who owns the pharmacies, and whose plans prefer them
Drug Channels Institute's 2026 report estimates that the three largest specialty pharmacies, each owned by a company that also owns one of the three largest PBMs, dispensed about two-thirds of 2025 specialty prescription revenue. Revenue by pharmacy is not public, so that figure is an estimate and we cite it rather than rebuild it. What the public files do record, pharmacy by pharmacy, is who owns each one and which pharmacies each Medicare Part D sponsor's plans prefer. This page counts those rows and estimates nothing.
Whose plans prefer whose pharmacy
For the largest Part D sponsors by enrollment, the pharmacies their contracts' plans flag as preferred for mail in CMS's Q2 2026 pharmacy network file, grouped by the pharmacy's cited owner. The sponsor is CMS's parent organization for the contract (September 2026 enrollment file); "the sponsor's own pharmacy" means the CMS parent and the pharmacy's owner are the same company. Where a sponsor prefers another company's PBM-owned pharmacy, that is usually its PBM contract showing: Centene's pharmacy benefits have been managed by Express Scripts since January 1, 2024, and Health Care Service Corporation bought Cigna's Medicare plans on March 19, 2025, both per Cigna's FY2025 10-K.
| Sponsor (CMS parent organization) | Part D enrollees | Contracts | Pharmacies its plans prefer for mail |
|---|---|---|---|
| UnitedHealth Group, Inc. | 11,806,898 | 66 |
|
| Humana Inc. | 10,211,102 | 39 |
|
| Centene Corporation | 9,855,346 | 68 |
|
| CVS Health Corporation | 7,130,765 | 43 |
|
| Health Care Service Corporation | 3,610,903 | 28 |
|
| Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. | 2,106,784 | 13 | no preferred mail pharmacy listed |
| Elevance Health, Inc. | 1,840,673 | 47 | no preferred mail pharmacy listed |
| BlueCross BlueShield Association, Federal Employee | 885,150 | 1 | no preferred mail pharmacy listed |
| Devoted Health, Inc. | 516,959 | 42 | no preferred mail pharmacy listed |
| SCAN Group | 461,720 | 10 |
|
| Highmark Health | 420,142 | 11 |
|
| MHH Healthcare, L.P. | 374,746 | 2 |
|
ⓘ How this was built
- CMS Quarterly Prescription Drug Plan Formulary, Pharmacy Network, and Pricing Information — pharmacy networks file (one row per plan × pharmacy; PREFERRED_STATUS_MAIL)
- CMS Monthly Enrollment by Contract — Parent Organization and Part D enrollment per contract
- CMS NPPES monthly file — pharmacy names by NPI
- Ownership mapping with one citation per owner (drugdashboards.pharmacy_owners; the citations appear in the owners table below)
For each contract in the Q2 2026 network file, the pharmacies flagged PREFERRED_STATUS_MAIL = Y by any of its plans; the pharmacy number is the NPI with a "10" prefix (every sampled value passes the NPI check digit at that offset and resolves in the NPI registry). Contracts are rolled up to CMS's parent organization from the September 2026 enrollment file and pharmacies to their cited owner, or to their NPPES name when no owner is cited. "N of M contracts" counts contracts in the network file against the parent's Part D contracts in the enrollment file. Nothing is weighted by enrollment or claims.
Pipeline and calculations built by Claude (Fable 5) from the public datasets above. Educational only — verify against primary sources before acting.
| Pharmacy (by cited owner, else NPPES name) | NPIs | Contracts preferring (of 259) | Plan listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Cigna Group (Evernorth) Owner also owns a PBM | 31 | 125 | 11,481 |
| NPI not in the pharmacy roster no cited owner | 2 | 51 | 1,043 |
| UnitedHealth Group (Optum Rx) Owner also owns a PBM | 24 | 39 | 11,784 |
| CVS Health Owner also owns a PBM | 5 | 38 | 2,470 |
| Humana (CenterWell) Owner also owns a PBM | 2 | 37 | 1,748 |
| Amazon (PillPack / Amazon Pharmacy) Other public company | 34 | 32 | 5,576 |
| Walgreens Boots Alliance Retail chain | 1 | 16 | 87 |
| Wegmans Retail chain | 1 | 3 | 19 |
| HEALTHDYNE PHARMACY FL, LLC No cited owner (unmatched) | 1 | 3 | 11 |
| INTEGRATED HEALTH CONCEPTS, INC. No cited owner (unmatched) | 1 | 2 | 29 |
| HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM Hospital or health system (name heuristic) | 2 | 2 | 18 |
| Costco Wholesale Retail chain | 3 | 2 | 15 |
ⓘ How this was built
- CMS SPUF pharmacy networks file (PREFERRED_STATUS_MAIL) for the latest quarter
- CMS NPPES monthly file and the cited ownership mapping
Pharmacies flagged preferred for mail, grouped by cited owner (or NPPES name), ranked by the number of Part D contracts with at least one plan preferring them; plan listings count plan rows, so a pharmacy preferred by every plan in a contract counts once per plan.
Pipeline and calculations built by Claude (Fable 5) from the public datasets above. Educational only — verify against primary sources before acting.
Who runs the pharmacies
Every organization NPI in the NPPES file of September 13, 2026 that carries a pharmacy taxonomy, by the kind of owner the cited mapping assigns. "Self-declared specialty" is the NUCC Specialty Pharmacy code (3336S0011X) on the NPI's own record — a declaration the provider makes, not an accreditation, and one the large specialty operations often skip in favor of Mail Order or plain Pharmacy — so owner-level counts always show all pharmacy NPIs beside the specialty subset. Most pharmacies match no cited owner and are shown as exactly that, not as "independent".
| Owner kind | Pharmacy NPIs | Self-declared specialty | Mail order | In a Part D network |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owner also owns a PBM | 10,358 (9%) | 166 | 115 | 9,931 |
| Insurer-owned | 617 (1%) | 13 | 12 | 407 |
| Retail chain | 25,177 (23%) | 217 | 34 | 20,171 |
| Wholesaler-owned | 13 (0%) | 8 | 6 | 5 |
| Other public company | 296 (0%) | 54 | 17 | 210 |
| Nonprofit | 91 (0%) | 69 | 0 | 72 |
| Hospital or health system (name heuristic) | 5,175 (5%) | 583 | 85 | 2,832 |
| No cited owner (unmatched) | 70,119 (63%) | 3,987 | 1,512 | 31,975 |
ⓘ How this was built
- CMS NPPES Data Dissemination monthly file (Entity Type 2 records with any NUCC 3336* taxonomy code)
- NUCC health care provider taxonomy code set (pharmacy family)
- CMS SPUF pharmacy networks file (whether the NPI appears in any Part D plan network this quarter)
- Ownership mapping with one citation per owner
Counts of NPIs. Owner kinds come from name patterns matched against the NPPES legal name, other names and parent organization; every named owner carries its own 10-K or announcement as the citation. The hospital/health-system kind is a word heuristic on those names and is labelled as such. Unmatched means no pattern fired.
Pipeline and calculations built by Claude (Fable 5) from the public datasets above. Educational only — verify against primary sources before acting.
The named owners
Each owner the mapping names, with what the two CMS files say about its pharmacies: how many NPIs it has, how many of those are in any Part D plan network, the most plans listing any single one of them, and how many contracts' plans prefer one of them for mail. The citation column is the document that says the owner owns the pharmacies; the note beneath each owner says what it says.
| Owner | Pharmacy NPIs | Specialty / mail | Plans listing one (of 5,496) | Contracts preferring for mail (of 686) | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Cigna Group (Evernorth) Owner also owns a PBM · PBM: Express Scripts FY2025 10-K: Accredo Specialty Pharmacy (35 licensed pharmacies), Express Scripts Pharmacy (11) and EnGuide Pharmacy (2) are Evernorth's pharmacies, CuraScript SD its specialty distributor, and Express Scripts its PBM. | 79 | 31 / 39 | 3,195 | 125 | source |
UnitedHealth Group (Optum Rx) Owner also owns a PBM · PBM: Optum Rx FY2025 10-K: Optum Rx provides pharmacy care services through home delivery, specialty and community health pharmacies and infusion, and managed about $87 billion of specialty pharmaceutical spending in 2025. Genoa Healthcare's community mental-health pharmacies have been part of Optum Rx since 2018 (unitedhealthgroup.com newsroom, December 18, 2019). | 917 | 25 / 14 | 5,375 | 39 | source |
CVS Health Owner also owns a PBM · PBM: CVS Caremark FY2025 10-K: the company operates mail order pharmacies, specialty mail order pharmacies and retail specialty pharmacy stores, and its Health Services segment provides PBM solutions through CVS Caremark. Omnicare (long-term care) was deconsolidated in September 2025 and is not mapped. | 9,254 | 60 / 47 | 5,373 | 38 | source |
Humana (CenterWell) Owner also owns a PBM · PBM: Humana Pharmacy Solutions FY2025 10-K: CenterWell Pharmacy (mail order), CenterWell Specialty Pharmacy and retail pharmacies inside CenterWell primary-care clinics; the Insurance segment includes Humana's PBM business. | 57 | 9 / 3 | 5,374 | 37 | source |
Amazon (PillPack / Amazon Pharmacy) Other public company Amazon announced its acquisition of PillPack on June 28, 2018; PillPack LLC is the legal name on Amazon Pharmacy's NPIs. | 72 | 1 / 9 | 5,190 | 32 | source |
Walgreens Boots Alliance Retail chain FY2024 10-K, the last annual report before Sycamore Partners took the company private on August 28, 2025 (8-K exhibit 99.1): Walgreens and Duane Reade drugstores, and AllianceRx Walgreens, the central specialty and mail pharmacy wholly owned since December 31, 2021. | 11,291 | 28 / 17 | 5,466 | 16 | source |
Wegmans Retail chain The NPPES legal business name is the owner's own. | 103 | 0 / 1 | 5,351 | 3 | NPPES legal name |
Costco Wholesale Retail chain FY2025 10-K: Costco operates pharmacies in its warehouses. | 658 | 4 / 11 | 5,396 | 2 | source |
Walmart Retail chain FY2026 10-K: Walmart U.S. and Sam's Club operate pharmacies in their stores. | 5,433 | 173 / 0 | 5,469 | 0 | source |
Kroger Retail chain FY2025 10-K: 2,250 of Kroger's 2,697 supermarkets had pharmacies as of January 31, 2026, under local banners. Kroger Specialty Pharmacy was sold in 2024 and is mapped to Elevance. | 2,640 | 1 / 3 | 5,448 | 0 | source |
Albertsons Companies Retail chain FY2025 10-K: Albertsons operates pharmacies under its store banners. | 2,451 | 0 / 0 | 5,396 | 0 | source |
Publix Retail chain The NPPES legal business name is the owner's own. | 1,417 | 2 / 0 | 5,375 | 0 | NPPES legal name |
Kaiser Permanente Insurer-owned Pharmacies whose NPPES legal name is Kaiser Foundation Hospitals or Kaiser Foundation Health Plan; CMS's Monthly Enrollment by Contract lists Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. as a Part D sponsor parent. | 598 | 2 / 11 | 116 | 0 | source |
H-E-B Retail chain The NPPES legal business name is the owner's own. | 331 | 2 / 0 | 5,373 | 0 | NPPES legal name |
Hy-Vee (Amber Specialty Pharmacy) Retail chain Amber Specialty Pharmacy describes itself as a wholly owned subsidiary of Hy-Vee, Inc. | 310 | 1 / 2 | 5,329 | 0 | source |
Meijer Retail chain The NPPES legal business name is the owner's own. | 290 | 5 / 0 | 5,372 | 0 | NPPES legal name |
Giant Eagle Retail chain The NPPES legal business name is the owner's own. | 253 | 1 / 0 | 5,335 | 0 | NPPES legal name |
BrightSpring Health Services Other public company FY2025 10-K: PharMerica is a BrightSpring subsidiary and the Infusion and Specialty Pharmacy business is one of its two pharmacy lines; brightspringhealth.com lists Onco360 among its brands and announced CareMed as its specialty pharmacy selected for Leqembi (November 6, 2024). | 155 | 20 / 4 | 5,373 | 0 | source |
AIDS Healthcare Foundation Nonprofit AHF Pharmacy's site states it is part of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit. | 91 | 69 / 0 | 5,393 | 0 | source |
Option Care Health Other public company FY2025 10-K: Option Care Health is a publicly traded home and alternate-site infusion provider. | 69 | 33 / 4 | 1,176 | 0 | source |
Elevance Health (CarelonRx) Owner also owns a PBM · PBM: CarelonRx Kroger's FY2025 10-K records the 2024 sale of Kroger Specialty Pharmacy ($2.0 billion of 2024 sales); the buyer was CarelonRx, Elevance's PBM, with closing on October 4, 2024 (carelonrx.com/perspectives/kroger-acquisition). | 42 | 35 / 9 | 4,306 | 0 | source |
Centene (AcariaHealth) Insurer-owned FY2025 10-K: AcariaHealth provides specialty pharmacy services in Centene's Other segment. Centene's pharmacy benefits are managed by Express Scripts under a multiyear agreement that began January 1, 2024 (Cigna FY2025 10-K). | 19 | 11 / 1 | 5,351 | 0 | source |
McKesson (Biologics by McKesson) Wholesaler-owned Biologics by McKesson, the wholesaler's specialty pharmacy (Cary, NC and Fort Worth, TX), on McKesson's own domain; McKesson's FY2026 10-K describes its specialty and plasma distribution and oncology businesses. | 13 | 8 / 6 | 2,669 | 0 | source |
Navitus Health Solutions (Lumicera) Owner also owns a PBM · PBM: Navitus Navitus, a PBM, describes Lumicera Health Services as its wholly owned specialty pharmacy. | 9 | 6 / 3 | 5,373 | 0 | source |
ⓘ How this was built
- CMS NPPES monthly file
- CMS SPUF pharmacy networks file (latest quarter)
- Each owner's own 10-K or announcement, linked in the citation column
Per owner: NPIs matched by the cited name patterns; specialty and mail are the NUCC codes on those records; "plans listing one" is the largest number of plan rows any one of the owner's NPIs appears in (retail chains sit in nearly every network, which is why CVS's count is near the 5,496 plans in the file); "contracts preferring for mail" counts distinct contracts with a plan flagging one of the owner's NPIs as preferred for mail.
Pipeline and calculations built by Claude (Fable 5) from the public datasets above. Educational only — verify against primary sources before acting.
The public revenue bracket
No company reports what its specialty pharmacy dispenses; that is why Drug Channels Institute estimates it and why this is a bracket, not a ranking. For each public parent, the annual-report line that contains its specialty pharmacy, in USD as filed for fiscal 2025, with what the line includes and excludes in the filer's own terms. Where no line isolates the pharmacy the cell says so. Private owners have no figure at all.
| Parent and its specialty pharmacies | Reported line | Latest | Prior | Change | Filing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Cigna Group Accredo, Express Scripts Pharmacy, EnGuide | Evernorth Health Services: Specialty and Care Services revenues Accredo and the other Evernorth pharmacies together with CuraScript SD specialty distribution, eviCore and care services: a superset of specialty dispensing. The Pharmacy Benefit Services line ($132,126 million) is the PBM. | $102.8B | $90.3B | +13.8% | Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 2025 vs 2024 |
CVS Health CVS Specialty, Caremark mail pharmacies | Health Services: Mail & specialty revenues Specialty mail claims, including Specialty Connect claims picked up at a retail pharmacy, plus ordinary mail order and specialty claims fulfilled by the Pharmacy & Consumer Wellness segment. Specialty dispensed through the retail network sits in the separate pharmacy network line ($101,775 million). | $79.3B | $70.9B | +11.9% | Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 2025 vs 2024 |
UnitedHealth Group Optum Specialty Pharmacy, Optum home delivery, Genoa Healthcare | Optum Rx revenues All of Optum Rx: PBM services, home delivery, specialty and community health pharmacies and infusion. The filing says Optum Rx managed about $87 billion of specialty pharmaceutical spending in 2025, which is spend managed, not spend dispensed. | $154.7B | $133.2B | +16.1% | Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 2025 vs 2024 |
Humana CenterWell Pharmacy, CenterWell Specialty Pharmacy | CenterWell: Pharmacy solutions intersegment revenues CenterWell Pharmacy (mail order), CenterWell Specialty Pharmacy and the retail pharmacies inside CenterWell clinics, sold to Humana's own plans (intersegment). External pharmacy services revenue was $1,218 million. | $11.7B | $10.7B | +9.5% | Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 2025 vs 2024 |
Elevance Health BioPlus, Paragon Healthcare, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy (acquired 2024) | CarelonRx operating revenue All of CarelonRx, PBM services included. The consolidated product revenue line ($24,470 million) is closer to drugs dispensed but is not split between home delivery, specialty and infusion. | $43.4B | $36.0B | +20.7% | Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 2025 vs 2024 |
BrightSpring Health Services Onco360, CareMed, PharMerica | Pharmacy Solutions segment revenue Infusion and Specialty Pharmacy (Onco360, CareMed and the infusion businesses) together with Home and Community Pharmacy (PharMerica's long-term care pharmacies); the segment is not split further in the filing. | $11.4B | $8.8B | +30.7% | Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 2025 vs 2024 |
Centene AcariaHealth | not disclosed AcariaHealth sits in the Other segment with behavioral health, vision and dental services; no line isolates it. | — | — | — | Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 2025 |
Walgreens Boots Alliance AllianceRx Walgreens, Walgreens specialty and retail pharmacies | not disclosed AllianceRx Walgreens sits inside the U.S. Retail Pharmacy segment in the FY2024 report, the last before the August 2025 take-private by Sycamore Partners; no specialty line. | — | — | — | Form 10-K for the year ended August 31, 2024 FY2024 (August) |
McKesson Biologics by McKesson | not disclosed Biologics by McKesson is not reported separately; the Oncology & Multispecialty segment mixes distribution, practice services and pharmacy. | — | — | — | Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2026 FY2026 (March) |
Walmart Walmart Specialty Pharmacy, store pharmacies | not disclosed Pharmacy sits inside Walmart U.S.'s health and wellness merchandise category; no specialty line. | — | — | — | Form 10-K for the year ended January 31, 2026 FY2026 (January) |
Navitus Health Solutions Lumicera Health Services | private company No public filing. Navitus describes Lumicera as its wholly owned specialty pharmacy. | — | — | — | navitus.com — |
ⓘ How this was built
- The Cigna Group: Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (SEC EDGAR)
- CVS Health: Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (SEC EDGAR)
- UnitedHealth Group: Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (SEC EDGAR)
- Humana: Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (SEC EDGAR)
- Elevance Health: Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (SEC EDGAR)
- BrightSpring Health Services: Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (SEC EDGAR)
Typed in by hand from the segment tables and MD&A of the filing linked in each row, in USD millions as filed; the change column is the simple percentage change between the two years shown. Re-keyed each spring when the 10-Ks land, with a nightly check that warns when the fiscal year falls behind.
Pipeline and calculations built by Claude (Fable 5) from the public datasets above. Educational only — verify against primary sources before acting.
Cross-check
The specialty definitions page carries the one estimate on the site about this channel: gross Part D spending on specialty-tier drugs multiplied by a 65–75% PBM-owned dispensing share that brackets Drug Channels Institute's 2026 figure. The counts on this page are the public shadow of that share: 92% of Part D contracts that name a preferred mail pharmacy name one owned by a company that also owns a PBM. Preferred status steers volume; it does not measure it, and this page does not claim to.
- NPPES Data Dissemination, CMS, monthly full-replacement file; organization NPIs (Entity Type 2) with any NUCC 3336* taxonomy code. Deactivated NPIs leave the file and the roster.
- Quarterly Prescription Drug Plan Formulary, Pharmacy Network, and Pricing Information, CMS, data.cms.gov; the pharmacy networks members, Q2 2026. 4,000 of the 69,603 network NPIs are not in the pharmacy roster (no pharmacy taxonomy on the NPI, or deactivated since the network file was built); they are counted in totals and shown as "not in the pharmacy roster" where they surface.
- Monthly Enrollment by Contract, CMS, September 2026; Part D enrollment is null where CMS suppresses small counts.
- Ownership: src/drugdashboards/pharmacy_owners.py in the public repository, one citation per owner, listed in the owners table. Re-read when deals close; see the corrections and re-key calendar on the methodology page.
- "The Top 15 Specialty Pharmacies of 2025", Drug Channels, April 21, 2026, cited for its headline finding only; Drug Channels Institute's exhibit is its own estimate and is not reproduced here.