https://mailchi.mp/8f3f698b8612/the-weekly-gist-january-27-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

Budget retailer Dollar General announced this week that it’s partnering with mobile medical service provider DocGo to deliver routine primary care in mobile clinics outside three stores near its Goodlettsville, TN headquarters. 

The mobile clinics will accept public and select commercial insurance plans, as well as offer services for a flat fee. It’s the latest step in Dollar General’s tentative exploration of healthcare, which includes a partnership with Babylon Health to offer telehealth visits in several Missouri stores, and the DG Wellbeing initiative, which has placed basic health and wellness products in roughly 3,200 of its 19,000 stores nationwide. 

The Gist: With an unmatched footprint in rural areas (an estimated 75 percent of the US population lives within five miles of one of its stores) Dollar General has the capacity to transform rural healthcare access. 

Rather going head-to-head with other national retailers who are quickly expanding into healthcare delivery, Dollar General has so far taken a measured approach, aiming to develop workable services that improve rural healthcare access at the margins. 

Since it hired a chief medical officer in 2021, it has dabbled in small care delivery pilots like this one, but one of these pilots will need to succeed at scale for Dollar General to enter the ranks of serious retail disruptors.