Walmart announced yesterday that it plans to completely shut down its chain of 51 clinics and a virtual care service that debuted only a few weeks ago. Walmart began opening the clinics in 2019, with the first in Georgia and Florida. Texas was seen as a growth market, and April 9th marked the start of four new locations around Houston. The plan was to provide primary care office visits, dental, labs, and x-rays under one roof. The concept is not far from CVS and Walgreens, which have Minute Clinic and Village Medical, respectively, to provide similar services in their stores. Grocery competitor HEB also owns a chain of clinics. However, unlike Walmart, which accepts insurance, HEB’s clinics are designed with patient payment in mind. Walmart’s main issues with the clinic experiment seemed to be based on lacking metrics. However, insurance woes were also stated as a problem for the clinics. Walmart had planned to open 18 Health Center locations in Texas by the end of the year but only made it to about eight before the closings were announced.
Funny thing too is that the Walmart on 529 near Hwy 6 just replaced their road sign to include the Health Center. Wild they are scrapping this so quickly after going so all-in.