Wal-Mart as healthcare innovator?

BusinessWeek is doing a respectable job trying to find a 21st century professional journalism model.  For example, all the writers and editors are on Twitter and they have a social media site called BusinessExchange.  BX is pretty slow and clunky but kudos for the effort (you can check out my experiment with it in the topic on Comparative Effectiveness).  In addition, BusinessWeek.com has been active with user-generated content, asking for story ideas and following through with great frequency on published articles.

I recommended one on Wal-Mart laying foundation stones for an interesting new health care delivery model.  Here was my submission:

Look at how Wal-Mart is becoming the new health care company of the 21st century. With initiatives to offer electronic medical record and pharmacy services to employers, inexpensive medications to consumers and instore/onsite clinical care to both companies and individuals, Wal-Mart is exploring a very new medical business model. It is one that relies not on selling health products and services as standalone things, but rather using them as essentially loss leaders to sell something else–groceries, toys, electronics, clothes etc. Just like Apple re-imagined what a song was to sell iPods and iPhones, Wal-Mart is re-imagining health products to sell consumer goods. And they have the distribution channel, market power and information technology to pull it off. Health providers, pharmacy benefit managers and pharmaceutical companies should take note.

BusinessWeek writer Greg Spielberg picked up the story idea and today published an article titled Wal-Mart Medical Clinics Stumble. A different theme than I had in mind, but very interesting nonetheless.  And it became the most read and emailed story of the day!  Spielberg reports:

Wal-Mart has more than 1 million potential clients among its employees alone, and it is betting that the combination of rising health-care costs and consistent traffic from budget-minded shoppers will prove successful. However, the enterprise has been marked by early stumbles and is taking longer than expected to develop. Industry experts and clinic operators cite brand confusion, advertising problems, broken partnerships, and the recession as factors in Wal-Mart’s halting foray in the field.

The stumbles reported are a reminder that all things new go through a challenge phase. However, the pieces of the puzzle for putting together a new health care delivery model are at Wal-Mart and appear to be a part of its strategy. Once they work out the kinks, this kind of alternative drug/care/services model could be one of the answers in health care reform.

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