Onsite Walmart Care Hosts and Community Health Workers at each site will help customers navigate their visit, understand resources and be a familiar presence for regular visits. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Walmart has unveiled plans to expand a new type of medical clinic offering consumers one-stop shopping for their health care needs.
The company opened two Walmart Health clinics in recent weeks, in Loganville, Georgia and Springdale, Arkansas. With the newest locations, the company now has four such facilities, each located adjacent to one of its stores. More Walmart Health clinics will be introduced in the future, the company said.
Walmart Health goes beyond the scope of walk-in clinics, providing a range of services that include primary and urgent care, labs, x-rays and diagnostics, behavioral health, optical and hearing services and dental care. Exercise classes and nutrition counseling will also be offered. Insurance will be accepted but Walmart Health is focused on clients who pay cash for treatment–a primary care appointment is $40, or $20 for children.
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Through partnerships with local health care providers, Walmart says its new clinics are the first of their kind, offering a wide variety of services in one facility at an affordable price. Each location is unique and serves as a prototype to test and learn the right mix of health and wellness services for individual communities, the company said. Patients needing a specialist are referred to other providers, but the company says it might offer a wider array of services in the future.
Onsite Walmart Care Hosts and Community Health Workers at each site will help customers navigate their visit, understand resources and be a familiar presence for regular visits.
Elsewhere, retailing and medical services are finding themselves under the same roof in a growing number of locations, and even shopping malls are welcoming doctors' offices. In Los Angeles, Cedars-Sinai Health System has opened a 32,000-square foot doctor's office at The Runway at Playa Vista, where upscale shops, a movie theater and a Whole Foods are its neighbors.
Malls are increasingly including medical services along with the rest of their offerings, as the health-care industry moves away from centralized campuses to bring services closer to patients, and mall operators are searching for tenants that provide entertainment and services to replace the brick-and-mortar retailers slowly being strangled by Amazon.com and other online retailers.
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Charles Toutant
Charles Toutant is a litigation writer for the New Jersey Law Journal.
