Walmart plans to shut down its network of health care clinics.
Walmart has been aggressively expanding its healthcare services in recent years, opening health clinics at their superstores across various states like Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, and Texas. These clinics offered primary care, urgent care, laboratory services, X-rays, behavioral health, and dental work, aiming to provide convenient and affordable healthcare to people in rural and underprivileged areas that lacked primary care options.
However, Walmart has recently made a startling decision to shut down these clinics, a sudden shift in its healthcare strategy. This move could potentially create a healthcare void, especially for low-income patients without insurance who relied on these centers. In addition, Walmart also plans to end its virtual healthcare services.
Ateev Mehrotra, a professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School who specializes in retail health clinics, said, "It's disappointing that Walmart wasn't able to make it work because these patients need care and don't have many alternatives."
In a statement, Walmart stated that closing these clinics was a difficult decision but the healthcare push wasn't profitable for the company due to the "challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs."
Mehrotra believes that Walmart's decision highlights the financial difficulties in the primary care sector. The Association of American Medical Colleges predicts a shortage of up to 55,000 primary care physicians in the next decade.
"This experience emphasizes the financial struggles that primary care clinics are facing," he added.
Walmart has asserted that it will continue operating its 4,600 pharmacies and over 3,000 optical centers throughout the country.
Walmart’s healthcare initiative
Walmart launched these clinics to cater to customers without health insurance and those with insurance plans having high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs.
"Healthcare seems like a big opportunity," said Walmart CEO Doug McMillion in 2020, shortly after the first clinics opened.
Rising costs and limited access to primary care have been long-standing problems, especially in rural areas. Walmart chose some of its clinic locations because these areas had higher rates of chronic diseases and a lower number of primary care physicians than average US communities.
Marcus Osborne, Walmart's former vice president of healthcare and wellness transformation, told CNN in 2020 that many people coming into the clinics hadn't seen a primary care physician in over two or three years or a dentist in five years.
Walmart faced numerous challenges with its healthcare clinics, including a shortage of healthcare professionals, according to Robert Field, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel University.
Walmart's closures demonstrate that success in retail doesn't necessarily guarantee success in healthcare, Field reasoned.
"It's a different type of business, requiring different forms of expertise and management," he concluded.
Read also:
Source: edition.cnn.com
