Walmart to Shut All Health Clinics in US Over Lack of Profitability

Walmart said on Tuesday it will close all 51 of its health clinics and shut its virtual health care operations, saying it could not see it as a sustainable business model to continue.

“Healthcare is expensive to run. We were finding that the increased labor and operating costs environment, like with reimbursement, both public and private, made it difficult [to run the business] and obvious we had to close,” Walmart spokeswoman Marilee McInnis told Reuters.

The company said in a statement those challenges created an environment where it saw a “lack of profitability” that made the care business “unsustainable for us at this time.”

Companies such as Walmart, Walgreens, Amazon, and CVS have expanded into providing healthcare services during the past five years, seeing opportunities in the highly fragmented U.S. system. But it has not been clear that consumers want such services from retailers or that they are profitable.

Walgreens, for instance, is planning to close 160 of its VillageMD primary care clinics after it recorded a $5.8 billion impairment charge on its investment in VillageMD.

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