In 2008, retail clinics have seemed to shut their doors in states like New York, Nevada and Indiana. Overall, 69 clinics in 15 states have given up the ghost, including those located inside Wal-Mart stores. What’s going on here? Is the strategy backfiring? Even one of the largest proponents of in-store retailer clinics, CVS Caremark Corp., indicated that it is slowing down its retail in-store clinic plans.
National retailers are trying to change the way you get health care — or at least, convince you to add basic medical treatment to your shopping list.
Already, Oklahoma has walk-in clinics in two Wal-Mart Supercenters, three CVS stores and at least one supermarket. Those numbers are expected to increase.
Last year, Wal-Mart announced plans to add 400 more clinics to Supercenters nationwide by 2010. Clinics already in operation are run by third parties, but Wal-Mart is installing co-branded clinics in 200 stores. These are partnerships between the retailer, RediClinic and local hospital systems.
At the end of the cat food aisle in Target Corp.’s Towson store, Miranda Collins toils away, evaluating sinus infections, dispensing vaccinations and measuring blood pressure.
She’s providing a new kind of convenience for customers who’ve grown used to popping in and out of big-box stores to grab everything from cereal to power tools to new shoes.
Collins is a nurse practitioner, and her little corner of the Towson Target is known as a convenient care clinic, designed to provide quick service for patients with relatively simple medical concerns.
The clinics are a growing phenomenon at retailers including CVS, Wal-Mart and Walgreen’s.
You are coming down with a sore throat or cold that seems serious enough to warrant a visit to the doctor, so you make your way to urgent care or the emergency room.
Coughing and wheezing, you sit in the waiting room for two hours while flipping through Field and Stream magazine. Finally, your name is called and you are led into the treatment room … where you wait some more until the doctor arrives.
More people are choosing a quicker option for common illnesses — retail health clinics located in malls and pharmacies that are staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
There are nearly 1,000 retail health clinics in the nation, according to a recent study by Verispan, a number that is expected to rise dramatically in the next few years as chains like Wal-Mart, CVS, Target and Walgreens add more clinics.
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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