Retail Healthcare News

The Medical Marts, which were housed in Meijer stores in Aurora, Algonquin and St. Charles, were different than their competitors in that financing came from private sources and staff at the sites included physicians.

Two of the leading providers of retail clinics, Walgreens and CVS stores, differ in that these locations are financed by large corporations and are directed by nurse practitioners.

Not only are their numbers continuing to grow, albeit probably at a slower pace, but additional types of business arrangements are being pursued with hospitals and large employers.

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For many years, the news on “retail clinics” consisted almost entirely of stories of new ones opening everywhere. But recently, we have seen a series of stories of existing clinics closing, in a wide variety of places for a variety of reasons. It may be that, like so many innovations, retail clinics will follow the same kind of boom and bust history that has affected others, due to the fallacy of composition.

While there are many versions of this logical fallacy, its application in this case is the expectation that since the first examples of retail clinics are successful, all subsequent examples will be, also. Such optimism has affected investors in automobiles, where in the early part of the last century, literally hundreds of different companies emerged making cars, with only the “big three” having survived till the present, and their future not guaranteed. While retail clinics started slowly, they have burst into the hundreds with predictions of thousands in recent years.

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So, it looks like retail clinic news has been a matter of two steps forward, one step back. For example, Cigna has just announced that it would pay for care delivered at another retail clinic chain, increasing its reach to quite a large number of such clinics. This bodes well for other larger commercial insurers to take similar steps, which can only help accelerate the growth of the industry.

On the negative side of the column, meanwhile, retail clinic chain Medical Marts has shuttered operations. And more worrisome, for people pushing the retail clinic model, the state of Illinois is pondering rules that would slip in a provision preventing stores that host clinics from selling tobacco or alcohol, a requirement most retailers just couldn’t afford. My gut feeling is that this won’t pass, though you never know how regional politics will play out. It seems transparently on the punitive side, which will turn off all but the most ardent clinic opponents.

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In a blow for the physician-staffed model of retail medicine, a Las Vegas-based company that operated three clinics in suburban Chicago has shuttered its operations in various retail outlets across the country, an executive with the company confirmed.

Medical Marts ceased operations, shuttering more than a dozen clinics in the last month it operated in Illinois, Missouri, Virginia and Utah. The company was founded four years ago and operated in various retailers including Shopko stores and Meijer supercenter stores.

“The venture capitalists backing the company had a change of heart and decided to go another direction with their funding,” said Dr. Kenneth Richmond, a Wilmette physician and vice president and chief medical officer of Medical Marts, which had its corporate offices in Las Vegas.

In Illinois, Medical Marts had opened clinics in Aurora, Algonquin and St. Charles in Meijer supercenter stores, but Medical Marts had also been working with Shopko and other retailers.

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