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Walmart tests dentistry and mental care as it moves deeper into primary health
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/walmart-is-piloting-health-clinic-at-walmart-health-in-georgia.html
Key Points
- Walmart is opening up a new health clinic, called Walmart Health, in Georgia.
- The company has previously opened clinics inside retail locations in Texas, South Carolina and Georgia.
- At the new clinic, the company will offer hearing tests, 60-minute counseling sessions and vision tests.
Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, is moving deeper into the primary care and mental health market, opening a new clinic called Walmart Health in Georgia.
The company recently updated its website with a link to Walmart Health, describing its “newest location in Dallas, GA.” It also went online with the site “Walmarthealth.com,” where patients can set up appointments. Walmart is testing the concept with the initial clinic and could open more in the future, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans are confidential.
The Dallas location, which is set to open its doors next month, will give patients access to comprehensive and low-cost primary care, including for mental health issues. The clinic is in a separate building next door to a Walmart store to give a sense of privacy for patients.
The website indicates that first appointments are available on Sept. 13, and the company will offer primary care, dental, counseling, labs, X-rays and audiology, among other services. Sean Slovenski, who Walmart recruited from Humana, is leading the clinic efforts, the people familiar said.
Walmart is already one of the largest pharmacy companies in the U.S., offering in-store sections for prescription drugs in almost all of its 4,700 locations across the U.S. The company said health and wellness, which includes pharmacy, clinical and optical services, accounted for about 9%, or $36 billion, of its roughly $332 billion in U.S. sales last fiscal year.
The company hasn’t previously offered mental health services, but it did lease space in one of its Texas stores to a third-party behavioral health company in 2018 because of a shortage of professionals in the region. That experience has helped inform the company’s view of how it can have a bigger impact in the space, the people said.
A Walmart spokesperson confirmed the opening of the clinic.
“Walmart is committed to making healthcare more affordable and accessible for customers in the communities we serve,” the representative said. “The new Walmart Health center in our Dallas, Georgia, store will provide low, transparent pricing for key health services for local customers. We look forward to sharing more details when the facility opens next month.”
Primary care is a newer market for Walmart and puts it in competition with a different set of companies, ranging from large health systems to emerging businesses like One Medical, Circle Medical and Forward. Walmart’s distinct opportunity is that roughly 140 million people visit its stores every week, and it has about 1.5 million U.S. employees spread across cities of all sizes, including in rural areas where there’s a shortage of health-care services.
vs. the new Walmart Health
“I would put this in the broad category of retailers looking for services that give them opportunity for growth,” said Tom Lee, the founder of One Medical and CEO of primary care start-up Galileo Health, in an interview. “In-store concepts have had mixed success and this is an attempt to try something more standalone.” Lee said he wasn’t aware of Walmart’s plans.
Walmart has previously offered what it calls Care Clinics in Texas, South Carolina and Georgia, but these are incorporated into existing retail stores rather than its own site. The cost of an appointment varies from $59 to $99, although the company accepts many of the largest health insurance plans.
The new clinic will have on-site health providers, including nurses, to offer consultations, immunizations and lab tests, people familiar with the matter said. Added services include hearing tests, 60-minute counseling sessions and vision tests.
Amazon, Walmart’s rival, has also been making a bigger push into health. CNBC previously reported the company has been opening primary care clinics at its main office in Seattle. It acquired online pharmacy PillPack for about $750 million in 2018 in a bid to go deeper into prescription medication and take on companies like CVS and Walgreens.
Walmart has a culture of piloting new ideas in smaller settings, including testing delivering groceries inside of customers’ homes and experimenting with artificial intelligence at a Neighborhood Market store in Levittown, New York. If it can prove the model works, the company typically looks to scale the offerings across its locations.
Walmart to discontinue sales of some ammunition, ban open carry in stores
Walmart announced on Tuesday that it would formally end handgun sales, discontinue sales on certain types types of ammunition and ban customers from openly carrying firearms after last month’s mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, store.
Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart Inc., detailed the move in a letter to associates one month after a gunman with an assault-style rifle “launched a hate-filled attack in our store,” killing 22 people and injuring dozens more.
“We’ve also been listening to a lot of people inside and outside our company as we think about the role we can play in helping to make the country safer,” McMillon wrote. “It’s clear to us that the status quo is unacceptable.”
The company will discontinue sale of short-barrel rifle ammunition, such as .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber. McMillon, a gun owner who grew up hunting, wrote that while the ammunition is often used for hunting rifles, it can also be used in large capacity clips on military-style weapons.
Walmart will also sell through the remaining inventory of handgun ammunition, as well as discontinue handgun sales in Alaska — the last state where the company still sells handguns.
The retail giant will continue to sell long-barrel deer rifles and shotguns, as well as most of the ammunition and accessories they require.
“We believe these actions will reduce our market share of ammunition from around 20% to a range of approximately 6 to 9%,” McMillon wrote. “We believe it will likely drift toward the lower end of that range, over time, given the combination of these changes.”
McMillon noted that there have been “multiple incidents” of individuals wanting to “test our response” to the El Paso shooting by bringing weapons into stores, leading the company to change its open carry policy.
“These incidents are concerning and we would like to avoid them, so we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer openly carry firearms into our stores or Sam’s Clubs in states where ‘open carry’ is permitted — unless they are authorized law enforcement officers,” the statement said.
Dmitriy Andreychenko, 20, faces up to four years in prison and a $10,000 fine after he brought more than 100 rounds of ammunition to a Walmart in Springfield, Mo., as part of a “social experiment.”
Walmart, the largest firearm retailer in the country, stopped selling assault-style rifles in 2015 and in 2018 raised the age to purchase guns from 18 to 21.
McMillon wrote that Walmart believes “reauthorization of the Assault Weapons ban should be debated to determine its effectiveness” and called on lawmakers to strength background checks.
“As we’ve seen before, these horrific events occur and then the spotlight fades. We should not allow that to happen,” the CEO’s statement read. “Congress and the administration should act. Given our decades of experience selling firearms, we are also offering to serve as a resource in the national debate on responsible gun sales.”
The change in some ammunition sales comes after the company initially said that it has issued no directives to alter policy.
As many as 40 employees walked out of the company’s e-commerce office in California to protest inaction in the retail giant’s gun sales.
Kaiser workers block traffic in Labor Day protest
About 50 employees blocked traffic in front of Kaiser Permanente’s downtown Sacramento, Calif., office on Sept. 2 as part of a planned Labor Day protest in five cities, reports The Sacramento Bee.
The workers held strikes in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Denver, Portland, Ore., and Oakland, Calif. Police said 54 people were cited and released after the protest in Sacramento, according to CBS Sacramento.
“We support the rights of workers to publicly demonstrate and celebrate Labor Day,” Sandy Sharon, RN, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser’s Sacramento office, told The Sacramento Bee. “Unfortunately, there were acts of civil disobedience that taxed our city and police resources.”
The Kaiser employees are protesting the system’s “unfair labor practices and shift from prioritizing patients and the community to profits and enriching top executives,” the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions said in a press release cited by The Sacramento Bee.
The coalition’s bargaining team and Kaiser have been negotiating a new contract for workers, as the current contract is set to expire this month.
The protests come as workers continue voting on whether to call a nationwide strike in early October. If a nationwide strike is called, it would be the country’s largest since 1997, according to the coalition. The strike would affect more than 80,000 workers in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
John Nelson, vice president of communications at Kaiser, previously accused the unions of using the strike threat as a bargaining tactic, “designed to divide employees and mischaracterize Kaiser Permanente’s position, even though most of the [union] contracts don’t expire until October.”
U of Chicago nurses vote to authorize strike
University of Chicago Medicine nurses have voted to authorize their union to strike, according to The Chicago Tribune.
The vote, conducted Aug. 29, allows the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United to call a strike at any time without further approval from nurses. They must give the hospital 10 days’ notice before calling a strike. If the strike goes forward, about 2,300 nurses will walk off the job and the hospital will hire agency nurses to temporarily replace them.
The contract between the hospital and the union expired in April. The union hopes the vote authorizing a strike will help them make progress on contract negotiations, said Talisa Hardin, RN, a nurse at the hospital and a chief nurse representative for the union.
The nurses are asking for lower nurse-to-patient ratios and more security officers, among other things. They picketed in July to call attention to these concerns and filed complaints with state and federal agencies in June. An investigation from the state health department found some deficiencies at the hospital but concluded it was still in compliance with Medicare standards.
“The University of Chicago Medical Center does not want a strike, and UCMC continues to focus on bargaining in good faith toward a contract,” the hospital said in an emailed statement to Becker’s. “We have a full strike plan in place to ensure our patient care will continue should the union call for a walkout in the future.”
HENRY KOTULA 