The future of pharmacy may depend less on proving pharmacists can create value and more on building the infrastructure that can measure, scale, and pay for it.
On September 2, H.I.G. Capital completed its acquisition of Outcomes One.
At first glance, this looks like another healthcare technology acquisition.
It isn’t.
H.I.G. Capital manages approximately $75 billion in capital. Outcomes operate a national network that it says encompasses approximately 85% of U.S. pharmacies. In 2025, the company facilitated more than 10 million clinical interventions across 130 million covered lives. Its technology also reaches deep into pharmacy operations, including prescription processing, dispensing, billing, inventory management, workflow automation, patient engagement, clinical services, data, and analytics.
But here is the sentence pharmacists should pay attention to.
H.I.G. said it plans to support Outcomes while “elevating the role of pharmacies in the healthcare system.”
Read that again.
A major investment firm did not simply acquire a company that helps pharmacies process prescriptions.
It acquired a company sitting at the intersection of pharmacists, patients, payers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, clinical interventions, workflow technology, and healthcare data.
And Outcomes says the new partnership will provide additional resources to continue investing in its pharmacist-led clinical network and technology platforms.
There is a much bigger story here.
Follow the money
Pharmacists have heard some version of the same message for years:
The profession needs to move beyond dispensing.
We have talked about provider status.
We have talked about practicing at the top of our licenses.
We have talked about medication therapy management, immunizations, chronic disease management, adherence, care gaps, pharmacogenomics, test-and-treat programs, and dozens of other ways pharmacists can contribute to patient care.
Those conversations matter.
But healthcare systems do not scale simply because an intervention is clinically valuable.
For something to become part of the healthcare infrastructure, somebody eventually must answer a different set of questions:
Can we identify the right patient?
Can we deliver the intervention consistently?
Can we document what happened?
Can we measure the result?
Can we demonstrate value to whoever is paying?
Can we do it across thousands of pharmacies?
That is what makes this acquisition interesting.
Outcomes is building infrastructure around that equation.
And there is already real money flowing through it.
During the first six months of 2025 alone, Outcomes reported that its pharmacy network completed more than 6.5 million medication therapy management services. More than 170,000 pharmacists and pharmacy technicians participated across community, chain, and health-system pharmacies.
Those services generated approximately $93 million in revenue for pharmacies through service and validation fees.
Outcomes has separately reported that its integrated approach returned more than $180 million in revenue to pharmacies in 2024.
That is an important distinction.
We are no longer talking only about the theoretical clinical value of pharmacists.
We are looking at infrastructure that is already connecting pharmacist activity to revenue at national scale.
The real asset may be the connection
Think about the chain of value being built:
Pharmacy network → patient opportunity → pharmacist intervention → documented data → measurable outcome → payer or manufacturer program → economic value
The pharmacist interaction is essential.
But so is everything surrounding it.
Someone has to determine which patients should receive an intervention.
Someone has to build the clinical algorithm.
Someone has to place that opportunity into the pharmacist’s workflow.
Someone has to determine what should be documented.
Someone has to analyze whether the intervention worked.
Someone has to report the result.
Someone has to negotiate with payers or manufacturers.
Someone has to build the technology that allows the entire process to happen thousands or millions of times.
That is why I think one of pharmacy’s most valuable future infrastructure layers may not simply be another dispensing platform.
It may be the infrastructure capable of turning millions of individual pharmacist decisions into documented, measurable, contractable healthcare services.
Outcomes offers a good example of what that infrastructure can look like. Its clinical engine uses algorithms maintained by its clinical pharmacists to identify patients for hundreds of targeted intervention types across more than 50 disease states. Its platforms also integrate payer and manufacturer-sponsored clinical programs directly into pharmacy workflow.
The scale matters.
A pharmacist identifying an adherence problem with one patient is good healthcare.
A network identifying thousands of similar patients, delivering standardized interventions, capturing what happened, measuring results, and demonstrating value to a payer is something else entirely.
That becomes a healthcare platform.
And this creates opportunities far beyond pharmacy ownership
This is the part I want pharmacists and pharmacy students to recognize.
When pharmacy expands beyond dispensing, the opportunity does not exist only for the pharmacist standing behind the counter.
An entire ecosystem has to be built around expanded pharmacy services.
That means opportunities in:
Clinical program development
Pharmacists who can determine which interventions are clinically meaningful, develop protocols, identify appropriate populations, and translate guidelines into scalable programs.
Product and healthcare technology
People who understand pharmacy workflow well enough to help engineers and product teams build technology that pharmacists will actually use.
Clinical informatics and analytics
Teams that can take pharmacy and patient data and determine whether interventions are producing measurable changes in adherence, quality, utilization, cost, or outcomes.
Payer strategy
Professionals who understand both medications and healthcare economics and can help design programs that improve quality metrics, close care gaps, or reduce avoidable spending.
Pharmaceutical manufacturer services
Pharmacist expertise can be valuable in programs involving medication education, adherence, persistence, therapy initiation, patient engagement, and access.
Implementation and operations
A clinical program can look brilliant on paper and fail completely if it does not fit into the realities of pharmacy workflow.
Partnerships and business development
Someone has to connect pharmacies, health plans, manufacturers, technology companies, and healthcare organizations around models where incentives actually align.
None of these opportunities mean every role will require a PharmD.
But pharmacists have something extremely valuable when entering these spaces:
We understand what happens at the point where medication therapy meets the patient.
We understand why an intervention that looks simple in a spreadsheet might be difficult inside a pharmacy.
We understand therapeutic decision-making.
We understand medication adherence.
We understand patient behavior.
We understand workflow constraints.
We understand the difference between theoretically identifying a problem and actually getting a patient to act on it.
That knowledge becomes incredibly valuable when paired with skills in technology, data, product development, healthcare economics, operations, or business.
This is what “beyond dispensing” actually starts to look like
Sometimes the future of pharmacy gets discussed as if one day pharmacists will simply receive broader recognition and everything will change.
The reality will probably be much more practical.
The profession’s role expands when healthcare organizations can reliably deploy pharmacists to solve problems that someone is willing to pay to have solved.
That requires clinical authority.
But it also requires infrastructure.
It requires documentation.
It requires data.
It requires workflows.
It requires contracts.
It requires measurement.
And increasingly, it requires technology capable of connecting all of those pieces together.
H.I.G.’s acquisition does not guarantee where pharmacy practice goes next, and it would be a mistake to interpret one private equity transaction as proof that every pharmacist-led clinical model will succeed.
But it is a meaningful signal.
A sophisticated investment firm managing tens of billions of dollars sees value in a company whose business sits directly at the intersection of pharmacy workflow, clinical services, data, payer and manufacturer relationships, and expanded pharmacist involvement in healthcare.
That should get our attention.
Not because pharmacists need investors to tell us our profession has value.
But because capital often flows toward infrastructure that people believe can grow.
Your Pharmacy Unlocked action for this week
Here is something every pharmacist can do, regardless of where you work.
Identify three interventions you already perform that create value but may not be adequately measured.
Maybe you:
Prevented a drug interaction.
Identified duplicate therapy.
Improved adherence.
Recommended a lower-cost alternative.
Caught an inappropriate dose.
Helped close a vaccination gap.
Identified a patient who needed additional monitoring.
Prevented a medication error.
Improved someone’s understanding of their therapy.
Helped a patient actually start a medication they had been avoiding.
Then ask yourself:
What would I need to document to prove that this intervention created clinical or economic value?
Think through five things:
1. The intervention: What exactly did you do?
2. The problem: What could have happened without the intervention?
3. The outcome: What changed because you intervened?
4. The evidence: What data would demonstrate that change?
5. The economic connection: Who benefits financially when that outcome improves?
That last question is particularly important.
Because the future of healthcare does not only belong to people who create value.
It increasingly belongs to the people and organizations capable of identifying, measuring, communicating, and scaling that value.
Pharmacists are already doing enormously valuable work every day.
The next opportunity is making more of that value visible.
And when you follow the money, there are signs that the healthcare system is beginning to build exactly that infrastructure.
Resources & Citations
1. H.I.G. Capital. “H.I.G. Capital Invests in Outcomes.” September 2, 2026.
Primary announcement confirming H.I.G. Capital’s acquisition of Outcomes One, H.I.G.’s approximately $75 billion in capital under management, Outcomes’ approximately 85% U.S. pharmacy network reach, more than 10 million clinical interventions across 130 million covered lives in 2025, its technology capabilities, planned investment in the pharmacist-led clinical network, and H.I.G.’s statement regarding elevating pharmacies’ role in healthcare. 2. Kirkland & Ellis LLP. “Kirkland Advises H.I.G. Capital on Acquisition of Outcomes One.” September 2, 2026. Independent transaction announcement confirming Kirkland & Ellis represented H.I.G. Capital in the acquisition and identifying Outcomes as a provider of clinical network services and pharmacy technology 3. Outcomes. “Outcomes Network Achieves Record First Half of 2025 in Patient Care.” Reports more than 6.5 million MTM services during the first half of 2025, participation by more than 170,000 pharmacists and technicians, approximately $93 million in pharmacy revenue through service and validation fees, approximately 48,000 active pharmacies, and reach to more than 130 million patients. 4. Outcomes. “Integrating Pharmacy Industry Draws High Interest.”
Reports that Outcomes’ integrated approach returned more than $180 million in revenue to pharmacies during 2024 and describes the company’s model of connecting pharmacies, payers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, analytics, and clinical workflows. 5. Outcomes. “Outcomes MTM Software.”
Describes Outcomes’ clinical engine, including pharmacist-maintained algorithms used to target patients for more than 600 intervention types across more than 50 disease states, as well as integration of payer and pharmaceutical manufacturer-sponsored clinical programs into pharmacy workflow. 6. Outcomes. “The Outcomes Platform Is Innovating Solutions Across Pharmacies, Payers and Pharmaceutical Manufacturers.” Describes the platform’s connection of pharmacists, payers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers and its use of payer and manufacturer-sponsored programs within pharmacy workflows to support patient care and pharmacy revenue opportunities.
