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Walmart chief executive officer Doug McMillon said Tuesday the retail giant remains committed to its rollout of Walmart Health brand centers to expand low cost healthcare services to tens of thousands of its U.S. customers.
Comments by McMillon and the head of Walmart’s U.S. operation came after the surprising departure earlier this month of Sean Slovenski who had been Walmart’s senior vice president of health and wellness for the last two years overseeing the launch of what he called “super centers” for healthcare services.
“We’re really committed to healthcare,” John Furner, president and chief executive officer of Walmart U.S. said on a call Tuesday morning to discuss the retailer’s second quarter earnings. “I don’t think we’d have any change in strategy that we would talk about at this point other than say that we were appreciative of the work that Sean did while he was here at Walmart, and he was here about two years and he wanted to get some clinics open and get started, which he did and did a great job. We now have clinics in Georgia, Arkansas, moving into the Florida market, and then later in the year, we’ve also announced a couple clinics that will go into Chicago.”
Walmart earlier this month announced it was expanding its healthcare centers into the lucrative Florida market beginning next year. Like the handful of healthcare services “super centers” Walmart has rolled out in the last year in Arkansas and Georgia, the Florida facilities will feature an array of primary medical services, dental care, and behavioral health services as part of a new model being replicated into other markets.
Executives said the new Florida centers build on the first 10,000 square foot facility that opened last fall in Dallas, Georgia, where Walmart shoppers and patients in the community have taken to the concept. Centers in other markets are about 6,800 square feet, which are still much larger than the 19 Walmart Health brand “Care Clinics” that take up about 1,500 square feet inside stores elsewhere in Georgia, South Carolina and Texas. The retailer says the Care Clinics remain an important part of their healthcare offerings, but are more limited in service.
The new, larger, clinics which are more than double the size of rival efforts by CVS Health and Walgreens are being launched in various sizes.
“We recently opened another clinic not far from Bentonville, Elm Springs and it’s a smaller clinic than the one that some of you have seen in Dallas, Georgia, and I think it’s an example of us, trying to figure out how many sizes we need with this square footage needs to be the equipment, investment, all those kinds of things,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillion said Tuesday. “So we’re playing around with it as you would expect, and it’s been interesting to watch how customers are interacting with that experience during the COVID-19 environment. The team has done a great job and the medical doctor and the other professionals in the clinic of keeping people safe, and demand is still strong in an environment where people are not necessarily taking advantage of a lot of preventative care.”
The move by Walmart comes as CVS Health opens hundreds of “HealthHubs” which include additional health and wellness items and services beyond what’s already available in the drugstore chain’s MinuteClinics. Meanwhile, Walgreens Boots Alliance earlier this summer announced a $1 billion investment into VillageMD to bring the startup’s doctor-staffed clinics to hundreds of Walgreens stores across the U.S. Walgreens has been partnering with an array of companies, testing everything from urgent care in attached centers operated by UnitedHealth Group’s Optum MedExpress unit to Partners in Primary Care Clinics for Medicare beneficiaries that are operated by Humana.
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