What if Wal-Mart Ran Your Hospital?

Today, I attended a talk by Alicia Ledlie, Senior Director, Health Business Development of Wal-Mart Stores, about the future of retail clinic care within the largest retailer on the planet.

Wal-Mart has already changed healthcare for low-income, underinsured Americans by lowering the cost of generic prescriptions to $4 — and, by extension, a larger population than their customer base thanks to Target and competitors joining in. The low-cost, “pass the savings on” mentality extends to their philosophy of clinic care — walk-in costs are $40-60 a pop, and include some basic testing services.

Here’s what Wal-Mart is doing right with healthcare:

1. Extended hours: they are open 8am to 8pm M-F and also on weekends from 9 to 5. That’s about twice the hours of an average doctor’s office.

2. Access to care: 55% of their population served by these clinics have no insurance. (Compared to about 40% for the average walk-in clinic.) This should be a measurable community benefit as it removes a strain on the ER, where visits run $1,000 or more and are often written off by hospitals anyway.

3. Fixed costs: by posting fees upfront, they reduce the likelihood that a potential patient won’t just walk away. As Ms. Ledlie says, “If you have $50 in your pocket and it costs $60, you won’t go.” A greater proportion of the community can afford to receive care and therefore elects for care.

Now none of these are unique to Wal-Mart, except for maybe the incredible access of retail space. But with their scale, Wal-Mart can offer a few more things. Through an innovative partnership model, Wal-Mart becomes a landlord to a hospital-sponsored tenant — either a direct offshoot of your hospital or a third-party relationship that refers into the hospital system.

Also, they’re proving eClinicalWorks as an EMR for the patients. (I guess that makes it a PHR, but go with me here.) Without the baggage of a system from the 70’s, they can roll-over a real, hard-ROI EMR platform… for those 130 million customers that pass through their doors.

What are you doing to make life easier for your patients that Wal-Mart can’t do better, cheaper, or faster nation-wide?