Is Retail the Place for Employee Drug Screens and Other Occ Med Testing?

MinuteClinic has made its name by giving customers shots and offering immediate care for low-acuity infections (ie, those for which prescriptions can be dispensed within the store). Now, however, it has announced a plan to partner with Alere eScreen to provide occupational medicine-type services for employers—most notably, including drug screens. The plan is to contract with companies who will send their workers to the CVS-operated clinics for biometric screenings, vaccinations, and Department of Transportation physicals, in addition to the drug tests. Unspoken in the announcement of the initiative is whether CVS locations will undergo renovation to accommodate the requirements of providing such services. Typically, MinuteClinic locations sit in 100-square-foot corners of the drugstore, without dedicated, private bathrooms reserved for patients—a key attribute for conducting drug tests for employers. Urgent care insiders are also wondering how it will work business-wise, as eScreen tends to pay at a deep discount.