Chicago-based Oak Street Health is laying off 219 people early next year as its owner, CVS Health, restructures parts of the business and closes health centers across the country.
About 80 of those employees are in Illinois, and the rest report to people who work in the Chicago office, said spokesperson Amy Thibault, in a statement.
“We regularly look for ways to operate more efficiently to better serve our clients, consumers, and patients,” Thibault said in the statement. Restructuring parts of the business “will help drive high performance, reduce costs, and best position us for continued success going forward,” according to the statement.
Affected workers may apply for other CVS Health positions, Thibault said.
CVS said in October that it planned to close 16 Oak Street Health centers across the country by February, including one in Chicago. The layoffs are also supposed to occur by February, though Thibault did not answer a question Tuesday about whether they are related to the store closures.
CVS bought Oak Street for $10.6 billion in 2023. Oak Street was founded in 2012 and provides primary care for people on Medicare, focusing on low- to moderate-income seniors in underserved communities.
Both CVS and Walgreens worked in recent years to expand into primary care before pulling back. Deerfield-based Walgreens invested billions of dollars into primary care provider VillageMD, with plans to put Village Medical clinics in 1,000 of its stores by 2027. But Walgreens ended up reversing course on that plan, and said in a Securities and Exchange Commission that it was considering selling all or part of its VillageMD business. Walgreens was recently purchased by a private equity firm, which took the company private.
CVS said in a statement last month that it continues “to believe in Oak Street Health and its proven care model” and would still operate 230 centers across 27 states after the 16 closures. CVS said Oak Street was dealing with high medical costs as well as challenges related to payments from insurers and changes made at the federal level.