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Walgreens.com's Pharmacy Gets Top Rating

Non-profit health advocates cite ease of use, quality of health information

September 13, 2007

• FDA: Baltimore Pharmacies Selling Expired and Counterfeit Drugs • Some Drug Prices Surging 100 Percent Or More • Kmart, Schnucks Expand Generic Rx Discounts • Coming Soon: Generic Drugs from China • Safeway Introduces Generic Drug Discounts • Medicaid Cuts 'Devastating,' Pharmacies Warn • Kroger Expands Its Generic Drug Discount Program • Supermarkets Launch Generic Drug Discount Programs • Drug Prices Can Vary Widely, Survey Finds • Wal-Mart Adds More Generic Drugs To Discount Plan • FDA Finds Problems with Online Drugs • Wal-Mart Expands $4 Generic Program • Walgreens.com's Pharmacy Gets Top Rating • Popular Blood Pressure Drug Goes Generic • Wal-Mart Expands Generic Drug Plan • Consumers Get Little Drug Price Information From Their Doctors • Florida Pharmacy Offers Generics Online for $3.79 • Wal-Mart Adds 12 More States To $4 Drug Program • Wal-Mart Expands $4 Generic Drug Program To 14 More States • Report: Shopping Around Beats Medicare Drug Prices • Drugs by Mail: Money Saver or Rx for Disaster? • Wal-Mart Expands Its Generic Drug Discounts • Feds Give Up on Canadian Drug Crackdown • Target Matches Wal-Mart's $4 Generic Rx Price • Congress OKs Drug Shopping Trips To Canada • Seniors Bemoan "Donut Day" • Wal-Mart Cuts Generic Rx Prices To $4 In Florida • AARP: Drug Prices Still Rising • Illinois Sues 48 Drug Companies • Pharmacy Benefit Managers Scrutinized • Survey Shows Value of Comparison Shopping --- • Medicare News

A non-profit consumer health project has picked Walgreens.com as the best online pharmacy, citing the quality of its health information and ease of use.

Experts at HealthRatings.org, a joint project of Consumer Reports and the Health Improvement institute, gave Walgreens.com a "very good" rating.

RiteAid's Web site, RiteAid.com, earned a score of "good," while CVS earned a "fair," with raters noting some information quality concerns.

All sites were rated "excellent" on their privacy policies, an important concern for consumers shopping at online drugstores. Two of the three sites rated only "fair" for ease of use. Walgreens rated "very good."

Raters gave all three sites a score of "poor," however, on disclosure of advertising and sponsorship policies, and on policies for correcting wrong, misleading or outdated information.

Even the best-rated site, Walgreens, contained some information on alternative medicine practices that raters deemed questionable at best. Another site displayed similarly questionable information, said the raters, about supplements for sale.

"Consumers should think of online drugstores the same way they think of drugstores you walk into," said Beau Brendler, director of Consumer Reports WebWatch. "You shouldn't be getting all your health information in the store, where product placement, advertising and other persuasions are at work. You might talk to the pharmacist, you've probably done some research, and you've probably had a conversation with your doctor."

Overall, raters did find the three sites to be useful to consumers in enhancing the experience they might have at a walk-in drugstore.

"Because of their market presence, drug stores serve an important community role, not only in fulfilling prescriptions and selling health-related products, but also in serving as a distribution channel for health information," said Dr. Peter Goldschmidt, M.D., president of the Health Improvement Institute.

"With better editorial policies and improved content, they could move from being a useful secondary source of health information to a trusted primary source. All the pharmacy sites we evaluated have a way to go to get there, however -- some a longer way than others."

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