Take Care Health

Clinic openings and closings / MinuteClinic / Take Care Health / Target / The Little Clinic / Walmart — No Comments
2
Sep 10

Green Shoots, The Sequel (vol 3)

Clinic operators continue to shift their mix of locations, closing here, opening there, changing operating hours elsewhere. Target’s announcement of plans to open five new Chicago-area clinics (Chicago Breaking Business, 9/2/10; immediate access) is just the latest sign of retail clinics’ continued evolution.

UPDATE: WalMart has also recently opened a new clinic in Palmyra, ME – it’s 100th retail clinic, according to available news stories.

Target has made few changes in its clinics mix in the past few years. The five new Chicago clinics will bring their total to 36 – a large move percentagewise, but not one that will vault Target into the ranks of the leading clinic operators, CVS (MinuteClinic), Walgreens (Take Care Health), Kroger (The Little Clinic), or WalMart.

Driving forces / Opinion/commentary/analysis / Retail clinics: field reports / Take Care Health — No Comments
25
Aug 10

Take Care Health Congratulates Itself For Engaging Its Clientele

On the other hand, what else are press releases for, anyway?

Exceptional Patient Experience Delivered at Take Care Clinics at Select Walgreens

Take Care Clinic strongly engages more than 3-out-of-every-4. The typical company in Gallup’s database strongly engages less than 1-in-5 of their customers.

“In today’s consumer-driven healthcare environment, engaging patients is far more powerful than simply satisfying a patient. Not only is satisfaction a poor indicator of future behavior, but more importantly engagement may be predictive of a patient’s willingness to make changes necessary to improve their health,” said John Fleming, Gallup principal and chief scientist customer engagement….

“Take Care Clinic believes that an engaged patient leads to better adherence,” said [ Sandra F. Ryan, RN, MSN, CPNP, FAANP and Chief Nurse Practitioner Officer for Take Care Health Systems]. “If a patient believes in the provider who is giving the advice, they are more likely to follow the treatment protocol that has been put together. This includes taking medication as prescribed, seeking follow-up care or making a lifestyle change. The patient is also more likely to return to a Take Care Clinic because of the great experience and care received.”

Before we continue – who knew you could grow up to be a customer engagement scientist? Sounds cool.

We understand Take Care Health’s and Gallup’s enthusiasm for the kind of customer engagement Take Care clinics are generating. What we don’t understand is this: given retail clinics’ focus on episodic care, and their explicit public commitment to supporting customers’ development and/or maintenance of relationships with primary care physicians, shouldn’t ‘scoring’ engagement success based on actual customer return visits be viewed as ambiguous at best? (We can set aside that, as a practical matter, Take Care will have a tough job gathering objective evidence that customers have in fact followed through on care recommendations from their Take Care visits).

Clinic openings and closings / MinuteClinic / Take Care Health / Target / The Little Clinic / Walmart — No Comments
4
Jun 10

Target Plans More Clinics

While there’s been a ripple of new-clinic-opening activity by Walmart and regional hospitals over the past several months, the “majors” (outside of The Little Clinic) have been fairly quiet, tweaking hours and service offerings here & there. (We think of the majors as MinuteClinic, Take Care Health, The Little Clinic, RediClinic, Walmart, and Target – major in terms of their pre-established retail presence and/or the fanfare with which they entered the retail clinics business.)

So it’s of some note that Target announced in yesterday’s Chain Drug Review that they would open eight new clinics in September 2010. CDR’s Russell Redman announced that Target would open three stores in Palm Beach FL and five in Chicago.

Driving forces / Retail clinics / Strategic initiatives / Take Care Health — 1 Comment
9
Apr 10

Retail Clinics and Hospital System Partnerships

Most if not all of the leading observers of the retail clinics market have pointed to clinic alliances – with an assortment of retailers, with health systems, and with hospital systems – as an area of development to watch.

There hasn’t been a lot to watch in that regard, but now comes word via this April 7 Fox News story of Walgreens interest in forging hospital alliances.

Take Care Clinic is in “deep discussions” on potential financial partnerships between several hospital systems around the country in a bid to bolster the pharmacy giant’s presence in the retail-clinic market.

[Take Care Health CEO Peter Miller said] the partnerships may take the form of joint ventures, franchises or other business models where hospitals may take on some of the risks associated with establishing and running a clinic.

We truly hope this interesting news does not turn out to be a variation of the way Kroger announced its “new ownership” (and oh by the way its simultaneous closing of clinics in five cities) of The Little Clinic. The devil may be in the details: Take Care’s announcement explicitly notes its interest in pursuing financial relationships with hospital systems, in which participating systems would take on some of the financial risks of establishing clinics.

In contrast, MinuteClinic has initiated nonfinancial relationships with hospital systems such as Allina Health, but financial collaboration is “not really the direction we’re going”, according to MinuteClinic President Andrew Sussman, quoted in the Fox News story.

MinuteClinic / Retail clinics / Retail clinics: field reports / Tactical innovation / Take Care Health — Comments Off
8
Apr 10

Retail Clinics and Chronic Care Management

When we posted about the MedPage Today video story on retail clinics’ entrance into the realm of chronic care treatment, we missed this March 25 article on the topic, with reference to the video, at ABC News website.

So now you have it in words and pictures.

Driving forces / Onsite clinics / Retail clinics / Take Care Health — Comments Off
8
Mar 10

Onsite/Retail Intersection (Not?)

Workforce Management‘s Jeremy Smerd on employers’ emerging approaches to integration of clinics – onsite and/or retail – to their health strategies. Good stuff:

Work-Site Clinics Gain Favor as Retail Sites Lag (February 2010; free registration required)

The wide presence of Take Care’s clinics among employers in New York shows how Walgreens has aggressively tapped into the growing market for work-site medical clinics as part of its effort to rebrand itself as a health and wellness company. Analysts say the move makes sense….

Retail clinics and work-site medical clinics are thought to be complementary, offering different services for different populations….

But growth in retail clinics has stagnated….

Walgreens, meanwhile, has been quick to focus on work-site clinics. In 2007, Walgreens bought Take Care Health Systems, then a retail-based clinic, and the next year acquired two of the largest work-site clinic companies in the country, CHD Meridian Healthcare and Whole Health Management….

For now, Take Care remains the largest company in the fast-growing market for work-site medical clinics. The percentage of employers providing on-site health clinics increased tenfold from 1 percent in 2008 to 10 percent in 2009….

Count us among those who think retail and worksite clinics are complementary – and see the end of this post for at least one management team that also appears to do so.

We’ve commented elsewhere on Brian Klepper‘s February 2010 onsite clinics assessment checklist for Workforce Management, but wanted to include references to both under this topic title (Brian is quoted in the previously cited Workforce Management article). Because we’re here for you, dear reader.

Finally, we’re including this brief 3/1/10 Illinois Daily Herald report on Walgreens recent restructuring announcement (free registration may be required). The restructuring moves management of the pharmacy-benefits services business under Take Care Health founder Hal F. Rosenbluth, “along with workplace and retail clinics”. We’re not yet sure how, but we feel this may be relevant to the onsite/retail clinics strategy dynamic.

EDIT 3/8/10: o-kaaaayyyy, that last story is getting some real attention – here’s a link to Drug Store News’ account, with commentary: Integrating Health Solutions for Payers, Walgreens Unifies Pharmacy, Wellness, Led by Crawford (free registration may be required)

….At its essence, the restructuring is an attempt by Walgreens to integrate and bring to bear all of its more than 8,000 “points of care,” on behalf of employers, government and managed care….The result, according to [Walgreens CEO Greg] Wasson, will be “a unified offering to payers in the healthcare marketplace,” as well as “increased efficiencies across Walgreens’ pharmacy, health and wellness operations.

Clinic openings and closings / Retail clinics / Retail clinics: field reports / Take Care Health / Walk-in clinics — Comments Off
21
Feb 10

Walgreens’ Duane Reade Acquisition: The Retail Clinics’ Take

Go to Healthcare 311 – use that handy link over to the right there – yes, that’s the one, right up top – and run a quick search for clinics within 25 miles of New York, NY.

Note the number of results.

Now run the same search for Chicago, IL (neighborhood of Walgreens HQ), or Orlando, FL, or Atlanta, GA.

Compare the results. (Thanks for playing, and no, this exercise was not specifically a plug for our free and industry-leading clinics search utility. Really. It wasn’t.)

Hmmm……

We would guess you’re asking yourself “Why so few retail clinics in NYC”? There are a bunch of possibilities, which we won’t go into here (if you have a favorite theory, please add a comment).

We have the distinct feeling, unsubstantiated by any formal announcements from Walgreens or TakeCare Health other than the news of WAG’s purchase of the NYC-based pharmacy chain, that there will be more, soon; and/or that the number NYC-based employers in TakeCare Employer Solutions growing book of corporate clients will rise in the near future.

Duane Reade, in the form of its collaboration with DR Walk-In Medical Care, is already the NYC retail clinics’ market leader. Its format uses physicians as the care providers, rather than RNs/PAs. Direct reference to DR Walk-In is hard to find at Duane Reade’s main site – not sure what that means about the organization’s commitment to the retail clinic concept; as we know, even the big clinics operators make finding their locations more difficult than it ought to be.

Retail clinics: field reports / Take Care Health / Uncategorized — Comments Off
21
Feb 10

Gallup Finds Take Care Scores Top Customer Engagement Marks

As reported in Drug Store News, 2/16/10 (emphases ours):

Take Care receives the highest satisfaction ratings from more than 9-out-of-10 customers. Compare this with the typical company in Gallup’s database, which receives the highest satisfaction ratings from just 1-out-of-3 customers.

Take Care customer engagement results that have been collected thus far are in the top 10% of all organizations that Gallup has measured since 2003….

To put this in context, the typical company in Gallup’s database strongly engages less than 1-out-of-5 customers. Take Care, according to Gallup, strongly engages more than 3-out-of-4 customers.