CVS to lay off 5,000 employees nationwide, including 157 Aetna workers in Montco

CVS Health is laying off 157 employees who work in a subsidiary Aetna office in Montgomery County, the company told Pennsylvania regulators this month.

Aetna, one of the nation’s largest insurance companies, has been part of CVS since 2018 after a $69 billion acquisition deal.

The affected employees work in the Blue Bell office, the company wrote in a letter to state regulators. The impacted workers have been notified of the terminations, which will begin Oct. 21.

CVS has informed regulators of layoffs in at least eight other states, the Becker’s Hospital Review reported.

More than 200 employees in multiple New Jersey locations will also lose their jobs.

The largest CVS layoffs will occur in Rhode Island, where about 700 positions will be terminated.

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CVS will eliminate about 5,000 positions that do not interface with customers nationwide. The layoffs represent less than 2% of the more than 300,000 people the company employed as of the end of last year, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents.

The cost reduction effort comes as CVS prioritizes direct care, the company said in a statement.

“We do not expect there to be any impact to our customer-facing colleagues in our stores, pharmacies, clinics, or customer services centers,” the CVS statement said.

CVS has continued to make new acquisitions this year, including Signify Health, which has a network of more than 10,000 clinicians in all 50 states, for $8 billion and Oak Street Health, a primary care provider, for $10.6 billion.