This last summer, Walgreen sold its own pharmacy benefit management company for more than $500 million to a Maryland firm in a deal that Mr. Wasson said would help the company focus on becoming the consumer’s “most convenient choice for health and daily living needs.”

Walgreen braced investors last month for the potential loss next year of more than $3 billion in sales in 2012 if it lost the customers whose prescription coverage was managed by Express Scripts. In the most recent fiscal year for the company, it filled about 90 million prescriptions managed by Express Scripts. The two are parting ways effective Jan. 1 over payment issues, leaving Walgreen scrambling to contract with major employers directly in hopes that they will want to opt out of Express Scripts’ pharmacy network. Walgreen’s new model resembles the type of service that CVS and other major drugstore chains are trying to achieve by developing deeper relationships with customers and their doctors. Big pharmacy companies are hoping to increase reimbursements from insurers and employers as they become more integral in managing customers’ medical care.

At the newly converted Walgreen stores, one of the ways pharmacists hope to develop longstanding relationships with customers is through private or semi-private consulting areas away from the busy pharmacy counter.

On Chicago’s North Side, Walgreen has a pharmacy in the Andersonville neighborhood on North Clark Street that dispenses a substantial amount of medications to patients with the AIDS virus, so privacy for patients was critical and figured in the overall idea behind the new store model, company executives said.

Behind the pharmacy counter, the familiar bags of medications are tagged and labeled alphabetically in plastic containers, but they cannot be seen from in front of the pharmacy counter. “Customers want privacy,” Mr. Jhaveri said.