OnSiteClinics.Org

Walgreens and Memorial Hospital (Jacksonville) Announce Partnership

So far, this is Walgreens “retail” vs. “employer services” but we call the connection to your attention since we believe that this is an important trend that is only just beginning.  Hospitals and health systems cannot ignore retail medicine and employer on-site programmings.  Vendors cannot ignore hospitals.  The ones that form partnerships or at least collaborations of some kind will be charting new ground.  The announcement of the new partnership reflects on connectivity and ED costs.   There are siz retail Walgreens Take Care Health locations in the Jacksonville community. Clinics are open seven days a week, including evenings and there is no appointment necessary.  Memorial Hospital, in its press release, is calling this an “enhanced relationship” and it states that their “affiliated physician practices will share information on Take Care Clinics and other health care options when their locations are closed or they are unable to schedule an appointment within a patient’s desired time frame.”

The press release continues “Providers at Take Care Clinics will have information available to educate patients on Memorial Health services and will continue to provide information on a variety of local health care resources as appropriate. If a patient at a Take Care Clinic requires care that falls outside of the setting’s scope of service, dedicated systems between Take Care Health and Memorial are in place to allow for rapid sharing of visit records with patient permission.”

Keep reading between the lines and you will begin to understand why both parties would do this type of “enhanced relationship” and how it may impact the workplace clinics, if they are included at some point in time.  Several good ideas could come of this but the Memorial relationship will also define new opportunities for channeling that could be impediments to any employer planning a value based secondary services network for their employees.  One wonders how the insurers are taking this.

In any case, this is a bold step and one that was predictable and necessary.  We hope that it saves money for those who might have otherwise found themselves in the emergency department and that it grows into a true retail/consumer/provider partnership.