Marketplace

Retail drugstore clinics have been knocked for offering such limited services, at least compared with urgent care centers. On the other hand, the wisdom of giving patients even easier access to healthcare services in a setting they’re visiting anyway is undeniable. So, some major healthcare organizations are making commitments to offer higher-acuity services in large shopping malls. First, M Health Fairview opened a walk-in clinic at Mall of America in Minnesota—the first such facility in …

Retail drugstore clinics have been knocked for offering such limited services, at least compared with urgent care centers. On the other hand, the wisdom of giving patients even easier access to healthcare services in a setting they’re visiting anyway is undeniable. So, some major healthcare organizations are making commitments to offer higher-acuity services in large shopping malls. First, M Health Fairview opened a walk-in clinic at Mall of America in Minnesota—the first such facility in …

Just a couple of weeks ago, we told you that Walgreens had announced it would close nearly half of its in-store clinics in the face of withering competition. That move has nothing to do with their long-in-the-works plan to open physician-staffed primary clinics in partnership with VillageMD, however; the company just revealed that it has opened the first of five such locations in Houston. They expect the rest to open next month and in January …

Just last week, we told you that Tennessee-based Fast Pace Urgent Care was making an effort to bring behavioral health services to underserved rural communities across the South. Now comes word that another regional operator is following suit. Zoom+Care is going to start offering same-day mental health appointments, either in-person or virtually, through two of its Bellevue, WA locations. In announcing the initiative, Zoom+Care reasoned that people in crisis often have to wait days or …

Walgreens is shutting down nearly half of its in-store clinics due to stronger-than-anticipated competition, such as from the still-growing urgent care sector, and will instead start focusing more on telehealth services. The 200 retail locations that will remain open will mostly be those run through healthcare partnerships and focus more on complex and chronic health conditions like asthma, as opposed to immediate care. According to a recent post from mHealth Intelligence, Walgreens’ decision is part …

Visits to Zoom+Care locations are growing at a double-digit pace in both the Seattle and Portland markets, prompting the company to hire over a hundred new workers in order to meet the increased demand. How do we know this? The good news was called out in the Portland Business Journal recently, after which that article was blasted out via social media by Zoom+Care itself—for thousands of prospective patients and business leaders to see. The growth …

A new GoHealth Urgent Care-supported study by The Health Management Academy indicates that 74% of leading health systems are likely to expand their urgent care presence over the next 5 years, though only 11% say they’re “thriving” in urgent care at this point. (For purposes of the survey, “leading health systems” include the top 25 U.S. health systems based on net patient revenue per health system.) According to Thriving in the Urgent Care Market: The …

They weren’t designed as such, but recent events in Dayton, OH are proving to be a small but effective case study on the impact of urgent care. The local government was trying to drive down its healthcare costs, so it opened its own off-site urgent care/occupational medicine clinic for employees and their families. In the 3 years since, they’ve precluded around $1 million in reduced emergency spending alone. It’s gone so well that the Dayton …

Two years ago this month, we reported on the opening of an urgent care facility within the confines of D/FW International Airport in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX. The thinking at the time was that the combination of roughly 65,000 people working on site and around 100 times that number—65 million people—passing through the airport yearly made for a substantial customer base. Another operation followed suit, at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. However viable as the …

Urgent care operators have gotten more competitive with each other in recent years, working tirelessly to distinguish themselves and investing in new technologies to ensure the overall patient experience continues to exceed expectations. They’ve also had to make it clear to patients that urgent care offers a wider range of services than retail drugstores as those companies have tried to get a piece of the walk-in care action. There’s another setting that’s gone somewhat under …