National News Wal-Mart Health Care...Are you ready?

[Bubba]

Walmart is going to open there own healthcare clinics in stores....


Wal-Mart to open in-store medical clinics - Retail - MSNBC.com

[TexKan]

We already have one in Dickinson Walmart. It's brand new and ya know folks I have talked to that used the Redi clinic - really liked it. Thier prices are pretty cheap and the service is pretty fast. No sense in having your insurance pay hundreds of $$ for a ear infection. Hell all ya need is a script. It don't take a genius to see an ear infecton. They won't be doing cardiac type stuff there - just simple stuff.

[ksgrainman]

WOW cool, this must be the new National Health Care thingy I have been hearing about.

[TexKan]

Nope just another lowcost choice that helps out when you can't afford insurance or can't afford the medicine after you have paid the office visit. With these type of fees you can actually afford to go to the doctor AND afford to buy your medicine............ gee what a concept!!!

[ksgrainman]

Walmart is a wonderful company, helping out the poor like they do. I know some on here disagree because they are Big Business, and buy lots from countries with poor human rights records, but HEY !!!!!!!!

[TexKan]

A good deal is a good deal - no matter where you get it. When your child is sick - you aren't worried a whole bunch about business and politics. They become rather minuscule when you getting better determines if your family is fed or not.

[K C Muffin]

The drugstores up here are starting to put those in all over. At first, they were not used well, because there are so many hospital clinics for minor emergencies that people just weren't accepting them. I went once and had such good care, 15 minute wait (heck, I have twice that in my own doctor's office with an appointment!) and came home with the same script my own doc would have given me....because they asked what I usually took and gave it to me! It was a no brainer to me. They do have a sign, though, that warns if you have a life-threatening illness, to seek help from a hospital emergency room immediately. And they don't set bones - just the ordinary run of the mill infections, colds and flu. And they take my health insurance and ask me to only pay the copay, which I would have paid to my doctor's office anyway.

[Outofdodge]

Originally Posted by Bubba

Walmart is going to open there own healthcare clinics in stores....

Not sure why MSNBC is just now posting that, it's old news. The CVS and Walgreen chains have installed several over many different states with the expressed intent of getting people to fill their prescriptions in their pharmacies. I had to make a presentation to my board in December why our hospital SHOULDN't develop a retail clinic.

Matter of fact Walmart announced last week they are closing some 21 clinics in the Northeast.

[Highwayman]

Originally Posted by Outofdodge

Not sure why MSNBC is just now posting that, it's old news. The CVS and Walgreen chains have installed several over many different states with the expressed intent of getting people to fill their prescriptions in their pharmacies. I had to make a presentation to my board in December why our hospital SHOULDN't develop a retail clinic.

Matter of fact Walmart announced last week they are closing some 21 clinics in the Northeast.

That really strikes me as odd OoD. Why would a business NOT want to branch out into a growing segment of the market? Retail clinics are not going to go away if you ignore them. I would think that a retail clinic would pull in more business for a hospital because of referrals for things found by the doctors at the clinic.

[Outofdodge]

Originally Posted by Highwayman

That really strikes me as odd OoD. Why would a business NOT want to branch out into a growing segment of the market? Retail clinics are not going to go away if you ignore them. I would think that a retail clinic would pull in more business for a hospital because of referrals for things found by the doctors at the clinic.

The primary words are retail and "the things found by the doctors".

The successful business model for those things is a limited set of symptons, concentrating on cold, flu, ear aches, sore throats run by a nurse practioner or physician assistant. They don't have to and more often don't provide any diagnostic services. The pharmacies hope the pts will get their scripts filled there and any patient presenting with complex symptons is sent to the local ER or told to make arragements with a physician. The initial models were cash and carry so to speak with no insurance but has KS stated that part has changed but only somewhat.

Walgreens can hire a nurse practioner, give him/her a little office, decide what patients they will and will not see, get the business license, and that's about it. In Indiana we would have essentially had to open a mini-ER with all the associated costs and we could not differentiate the patients it served without running afoul of the access laws that make hospitals the provider of last resort. The intent was to move less critical patients out of the ER and get them care cheaper and quicker. We just couldn't do it in the regulatory environment hospitals operate in. In our case, even if we could work around those rules the self imposed tenets of Catholic Healthcare made it not feasible for our situation. That's not to say that another health system or a system in a different state could not find it feasible, but for us it didn't make business sense.