Dive Brief:
- Walmart is partnering with Transcarent, a consumer-facing healthcare platform for self-insured companies, to provide low-cost prescription drugs and other services to employers that are self-insured, according to a Friday release.
- The retail giant will make its low-cost prescription drugs, along with its optical, telehealth and other healthcare services available to self-insured employers while leveraging Transcarent’s digital platform to direct patients to the right sites of care.
- Employers have no up-front or per-employee-per-month fees and Transcarent offers a fully at-risk model and pays health systems up-front for surgeries, according to a release.
Dive Insight:
Some of the country’s largest employers, including Walmart itself, have opted for self-insured plans in an effort to lower healthcare costs for employees. In these arrangements, the company bears the financial risk for the cost of its workforces’ healthcare rather than an outside insurance company.
Now Walmart and Transcarent are teaming up to offer Walmart’s benefits to other self-insured employers of all sizes in an effort to help them save on healthcare costs.
Walmart will expand its healthcare services to self-insured employers through the partnership, availing them of its pharmacy, optical, telehealth, behavioral and other healthcare services. Transcarent will contract with self-insured employers to provide its digital offerings and help onboard them, and to share cost savings borne from using Walmart’s services.
The companies did not respond to questions regarding how they will determine cost savings.
"Most of America lives within 10 miles of a Walmart, which makes us uniquely positioned to deliver the right care at the right time in the right way," Cheryl Pegus, Walmart’s executive vice president of health and wellness, said in a release.