Posted by TDCTY Editor on March 18th, 2008
Walgreen execs said yesterday that the company’s buying a shop called I-trax for about $260 million and another company called Whole Health Management for an undisclosed amount, the WSJ reports.
Like its archrival CVS, Walgreen is no longer content with its retail business selling prescriptions, over-the-counter drugs and a random assortment of groceries and novelty items. Walgreen and CVS have both been busy opening retail clinics to provide health care in their stores. And last year, CVS merged with the giant pharmacy benefits manager to get into the business of managing companies’ prescription drug benefits.
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Posted by TDCTY Editor on October 7th, 2007
In his medical practice, Peter Krause now allots a full hour for new patients and a half an hour for routine visits.
The additional time has changed the way he practices medicine.
“You have more time to think about each individual problem the patient has,” said Krause, a family-practice physician. “It allows you to slow down your whole thinking process, so that you are more thorough.”
Krause’s new practice is at Kohl’s Wellness Center, a family-practice clinic less than a half a mile from the company’s corporate headquarters in Menomonee Falls.
The clinic, which opened in July, is one of at least eight in Wisconsin run by companies. It also is part of a growing trend in which large companies try to rein in rising health care costs by providing the care themselves.
Many of those companies - including Quad/Graphics, one of the first to set up its own clinics - have shown that they can provide better care at a lower overall cost.
They’ve done that partly by focusing on primary care and prevention.
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Posted by TDCTY Editor on January 14th, 2007
Frustrated by runaway health costs, the nation’s largest employers are moving rapidly to open more primary care medical centers in their offices and factories as a way to offer convenient service and free or low-cost health care.
Within the last two years, companies including Toyota, Sprint Nextel, Florida Power and Light, Credit Suisse and Pepsi Bottling Group have opened or expanded on-site clinics. And many employers are adding or planning to add even more clinics, which were experimented with about 30 years ago but fell out of favor amid questions about their cost-effectiveness.
Today a new wave of clinics is opening, driven largely by a motive that was less of a factor in the past: employers’ desires to reduce their health insurance premiums by taking care of workers before they need to see outside doctors. More than 100 of the nation’s 1,000 largest employers now offer on-site primary care or preventive health services — a number forecast to exceed 250 by the end of the year, according to David Beech, a health benefits consultant.
Corporate America’s new in-house medical offices go well beyond traditional occupational health clinics that hundreds of factories have long maintained for job-related injuries and worker’s compensation cases. Employees can now stop by for check-ups, allergy and flu shots, pregnancy tests or routine monitoring for chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma.
When prescription drugs are required, some employers arrange for the pills to be delivered the next day at the office or plant, while others even maintain fully stocked pharmacies.
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