Retailers and Health Systems Can Improve Care Together

The focus on convenience can be traced back to the origins of retail clinics over two decades ago. MinuteClinic, now a division of CVS Health, was founded as QuickMedx in 2000 to offer some primary-care services in a retail setting. (One of us, Robert, is an adviser to several private companies in the health care industry, including one that was acquired by CVS.) Walgreens, Walmart, and other retail pharmacies quickly offered similar services. The main purpose of the clinic model, which we call Retail Care 1.0, was to drive traffic into stores, encourage cross-selling, and redeploy idle square footage freed up from commerce shifting online. Services were typically limited to those that could be provided by a nurse or physician assistant. Although these clinics played a critical role in scaling up testing and vaccination efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic, they provided care in the form of isolated episodes that did not involve follow-ups with patients.