Down Goes the Walmart Health Clinics!
As I sit here and write about such things as yesterday’s Walmart disaster or the recent Walgreens catastrophe. I wonder if anyone could have predicted this. And then I remember what I wrote last week about The Medical Big Short.
Walmart and Walgreens have BIG money and yet they couldn’t find a way to get a good return on investment. They removed all the wasteful spending, you know, on doctors who were already replaced and yet it didn’t work out. What a pity.
Walmart said it was a “difficult decision,” but its health care push was not profitable for the company because of the “challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs.”
“We determined there is not a sustainable business model for us to continue,” the company said.
Readers of DPC News live in the DPC world. These clinics were outside our space and trying to work with insurance companies which is a no-win scenario. That being said, it is all about profits and you can only squeeze so much out of primary care. As Dr. Bliss and I debate the future of PE-backed DINO DPCs, I think the Walmart/Walgreens debacle puts a win in my column. Why? Replace Walmart/Walgreens with any big-name DINO and they still want that profit. Even though they don’t bill insurers, I predict (with good history on my side) that the DINOs will squeeze out every penny they can and follow in the footsteps of Walmart/Walgreens by replacing doctors. Then when that doesn’t work they will call quits just like Walmart did.
Who is right? The only way to tell is with time. NO ONE is going to study DPC DINOs vs. independent DINOs. We are too small. But time will tell as we announce the closings of each DINO, one by one on this site. Stay tuned.
Thanks for sharing the article on CNN.com.
The end of the article ends perfectly with a great quote from Robert Field.
Walmart faced several challenges with its health clinics, including a shortage of medical workers, said Robert Field, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel University.
Walmart’s closures show that strength in retail does not always translate into health care, he said.
“It is different from selling products, like toothpaste and breakfast cereal, and requires different kinds of expertise and management,” Field said.
Doug
Maybe you should reach out to Robert Field. Walmart closed 51 of 51 clinics with a success rate of 0%, yet through your research, sounds like DPC has a 90% success rate.
Greg
0%. LOL. Yup, DPC has got them beat yet they ignore us.
Let’s just face the music here… NOBODY wants to pay for primary care. And as long as primary care is the dumpster of our healthcare system much like mental health we will continue to suffer our poor fate. We’ve chosen quick fixes, high-cost specialty care, and big shiny hospitals. So, we get $4.3T of healthcare that sucks. We in the DPC community will keep fighting for primary care and resisting the referrals.