Dive Brief:
- Wal-Mart is moving into primary care delivery. The company has opened six clinics across South Carolina and Texas and has set plans to launch six more before January.
- The clinics, which cost $40 per visit or $4 for company employees covered by its health plan, will be staffed by nurse practitioners in a partnership with QuadMed.
- The new clinics, which are fully owned by Wal-Mart, will be open longer and later than urgent and primary care competitors: 12 hours each weekday and 8-plus hours on weekend days.
Dive Insight:
Primary care is already undergoing something of a hyper-growth stage, with hospital systems building large chains of outpatient clinics, telemedical primary care firms like DronDemand offering remote PCP access and CVS continuing to build out its retail clinic line. The entry of Wal-Mart is likely to speed things up even further. After all, when Wal-Mart does anything, it ripples out.
But Wal-Mart may have the upper hand on all of these competitors, as its expertise at offering cheap, acceptable-quality consumer goods is rivaled by few, if any, on the planet. True, rolling out hundreds of primary care clinics isn't the same as offering rock-bottom prices on socks, but I suspect its staggering success at squeezing savings out of other industries is likely to carry over. This looks like a truly disruptive play by the giant retailer.