Walgreens Keeps Wading Deeper into the Primary and Urgent Care Pools

Walgreens appears to be working harder to transition from a retail health provider to one that offers actual urgent care/primary care services, if its most recent moves are any indication. The company revealed it’s going to work with Humana to open two primary care centers for Medicare patients in existing Kansas City-area stores by the end of this year—doubling the number of locations participating in a pilot program that began in 2018. Each will have board-certified physicians and “holistic care teams” that include registered nurses, social workers, and behavior health specialists on site. Just weeks before that announcement, the drug chain revealed another project in which VillageMD will open clinics next to Walgreens stores in Houston. If they see good results, they say they’ll consider a national rollout of that partnership.