The newest Wal-Mart special is the walk-in clinic at the end of Aisle 14, just behind Home Furnishings. It seems like a wierd place to find a doctor, but it appears that brand name hospitals are ready to go retail. Wal-Mart has begun rebuilding its role in delivering healthcare after a failed experiment with RediClinics and is now partnering with local hospitals — already 33 walk-in clinics are in place.
Not to be outdone, The Cleveland Clinic has lent its name and backup services to a string of CVS drugstore clinics in northeastern Ohio. And the Mayo Clinic is in the game, operating one Express Care clinic at a supermarket in Rochester, Minn., and a second one across town at a shopping mall.
This is one more wave of competition, slicing off segments of the healthcare business. For hospitals, it is an enticing way of extending their local brand names into high traffic centers. For primary care doctors, it is chipping away at their business. Soon it might be a rare sighting to see frozen corn at the supermarket as the owners look for ways to add more profitable offerings and simply view their stores as a medium for selling more and more non-food merchandise.
Just one more sign that healthcare is changing faster than you can say PRESTO.
Filed Under: News & Careers
Tags: Cleveland Clinic, CVS Drugstores, Mayo Clinic, Patient Service, Wal-Mart Healthcare Clinic
About the Author
From sports journalist to editor of an international trade magazine to Marketing Director for 3 companies before founding WBK Marketing, eventually one of the 50 largest promotional marketing agencies in America. Dale has pioneered "contextual marketing" for successful brands at P&G, Pepsi, Disney, Toshiba, Compaq, Imation, 3M and many regional hospitals and healthcare insurers.
“From my days in college as a pre-med student and working as a transporter for Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, to developing marketing programs for hospitals and health insurers, I have always had a passion for how science and medicine can help bring sick people back to health. Hospitals are incredibly complex organizations, with two large clinical teams (doctors and nurses) and many highly skilled specialists and therapists. There are times when various groups working in medical centers have opposing view points that can lead to dissonance, which at the extreme can potentially impair patient safety and quality outcomes. The work we do at Compass Clinical Consulting guides many of these hospitals through contentious issues, process failure or breakdown with a negative impact on financial stability. Our department of education and information services has been assembled to produce high-value content for hospital leaders. Our goal is to help these leaders transform their organizations into better hospitals by reducing the cost of delivering safe, quality healthcare.”
Dale has been an active blogger since 2004 when he launched The Perfect Customer Experience (www.perfectcem.com); recently recognized as one of Top 20 CRM blogs and on healthcare improvement (www.better-hospitals.com) where we now communicate about issues that impact making better American hospitals.
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