Wal-Mart Wants Your Rash
“The Starbucks of emergency rooms”?
Patients are now “consumers”? Diseases are now “product lines”?
I recently read a Fortune article about Solantic Clinics – a walk-in urgent care with Herman Miller chairs, kids’ playrooms and flat-screen TVs. They estimate that a Solantic clinic can handle 60-70% of your typical, “non-life-threatening injuries and sickness” – things that you would normally go to an ER to treat. Doctors are paid about the same as a local primary care physician – but they receive a 15% bonus based on satisfaction ratings.
The founder, Rick Scott was the former CEO of Columbia/HCA, the country’s largest hospital network (340 hospitals, 130 surgery centers and 285,000 employees). He seems to have a perspective that counters the current push for government-run health care. However, I found his focus on marketing medicine interesting. According to the article, medicine doesn’t seem to be the focus, rather location, presentation and branding. The article cites Behind the Golden Arches, the history of McDonald’s as one of his favorite books. Solantic facilities are launched in strip malls and of course (you guessed it) – Wal-Mart. Solantic started with 13 clinics in Florida, plans to have 55 in 2010 and believes there is an opportunity to have 1,000 across the country.
Retail health care is not a new category. According to Retail Healthcare News, and their article Wal-Mart Wants Your Rash, more and more Americans are “sidestepping their family physician and taking their rashes, strep throat and pink eye to stores such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens instead.”
What struck me about the article mentioned above and this growing trend seemed to be confirmed by Bruce Carlson, publisher with the research firm Kalorama Information. This is not merely a public service – or just a great alternative to your doctor – it’s a lucrative market opportunity. According to Kalorama these clinics (MinuteClinic being a perfect, more advanced example) numbered over 1,200 in 2008 with annual revenue of $544 million. That’s a lot of runny noses and rashes at $60 a pop. By 2013, Carlson estimates a total of 2,400 walk-in clinics with revenue of about $2 billion.
Another survey, mentioned in the same article, conducted by WSL Strategic Retail, polled 1,500 consumers and showed that awareness (not necessarily confidence) jumped to 56% in 2009, up from 38% in 2007. Younger consumers with less of a tie to a family physician or perhaps without insurance are one of the fastest growing segments. Interestingly, another segment – consumers with income over $100,000 per year seem to be “warming up to retail clinics faster than low-income or uninsured consumers.”
Most recently, MinuteClinic announced an alliance with the Cleveland Clinic. Now, if you live in the northeast Ohio area (starting with 9 locations), you can go to MinuteClinic, see a nurse practitioner who will get clinical consultation from a Cleveland Clinic Health System appointed Medical Director. Nice. Even better, the medical records are going to be fully integrated across both platforms. Each Cleveland Clinic affiliated MinuteClinic will have access to a patient’s Cleveland Clinic MyChart electronic record which includes medical history, prescriptions, treatments and health information.
Wow. I can see why Wal-Mart wants your rash (and strep throat).
posted by Jason Ulrich on April 26th, 2009 at 8:03 pm Permanent link to this post
