CVS Health, an American healthcare company founded in 1996 and owns several subsidiaries including CVS Pharmacy, CVS Caremark and Aetna, among others. The company is headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island and was originally founded in partnership with three brothers, Stanley, Sidney Goldstein and Ralph Hoagland, in 1963. The parent company of CVS Health is Mark Stevens Incorporation, which helps retailers market a range of beauty aid product lines.

Although CVS Health began primarily as a health and beauty care store, it later forayed into the pharmaceutical industry. The company then partnered with the Melville Corporation to manage a chain of retail businesses. The company grew in size tremendously throughout the 1980s and 1990s and broke away from Melville Corporation, becoming a standalone company in 1996. In 2007, however, the company’s merger with Caremark Rx was completed and the healthcare firm was renamed CVS Caremark Corporation. But in 2014, following the company’s decision to remove tobacco products from its lines, the company was renamed again, this time to CVS Health.

In 2019, CVS Health was ranked at number eight among the top Fortune 500 companies and at number 19 among the top global Fortune 500 companies. The company’s annual revenue was over $194 billion. In 2017, CVS Health acquired Aetna for $69 billion. The acquisition was completed in November 2018 and legal issues were resolved the following year, in 2019. CVS Health has successfully managed to secure several acquisitions to date. Some of the most noteworthy acquisitions include Stadtlander Pharmacy in 2000, 700 freestanding drug store supermarkets from Albertsons, a renowned supermarket chain, as well as MinuteClinic in 2006. The pharmaceutical giant also acquired Longs Drugs Corporation, an American drug store chain, in 2008.