Physician | Founder, Physician Side Gigs | LinkedIn Top Health Voice | Keynote Speaker
Walmart joins so many others in quickly entering and leaving or scaling back in healthcare after ambitious plans to scale. This morning, Walmart said it will close all 51 of its health-care clinics, as well as shut down their telehealth virtual care services. This is right after an announcement in March that they wanted to double the size of their clinical operations by opening up over 20 more locations this year and more next year. The reasons they cited? “Like others, the challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs create a lack of profitability that make the care business unsustainable for us at this time.” As a physician, it’s been fascinating to watch over the past few years as so many non-medical companies try to get their bite of the huge percentage of the GDP that is healthcare. They pour money into trying to deliver healthcare at scale, ignoring the many concerns that hospital systems and physician private practices have been citing for years: declining reimbursements, shortages of clinicians, and expensive labor costs. Healthcare is broken, and those that are in it understand why. Patients need - and deserve - quality health care. This requires safe staffing practices, skilled clinicians who can feel good about what they do, and insurance companies that pay their bills. We can’t have a system where insurance companies can get away with record profits while finding more and more reasons not to pay for care and eroding away at the heart of healthcare. You cannot scale your way out of America’s healthcare problem. You actually need to fix the incentives, regulate insurance companies, pay clinicians appropriately, prioritize clinician well being and retention, and focus on the patient. The days of paying lip service to physicians leaving medicine and physician burnout are numbered. Supply and demand forces will necessitate real solutions that move the needle. Companies will come and go in the healthcare space when they realize how hard it is on the ground in healthcare these days. The question for patients and legislators is, who will be left to pick up the pieces if there’s no support for physicians, other healthcare workers, and hospital systems? The percentage of clinicians leaving healthcare annually because they no longer recognize the heart of why they joined the profession is astounding, with over 1/4 of clinicians looking to leave within the next few years. Relying on the altruism of clinicians and the erosion of quality healthcare to support profits for corporations is just not a sustainable business model in healthcare - not to mention terrifying for public health. #HealthcareOnLinkedIn #PhysicianBurnout #PhysicianShortage #Walmart
We all need to rally around this article. We—physicians—really need to band together. No one will care for patients like we do. We acknowledge that an entity needs to at least break even in order to provide a sustainable service. For the sake of our patients, our profession, and us (possible future patients), we really need to reform healthcare. All of us. Even a little bit of time, effort, or money will go a long way if we ALL contribute.
Thanks for the post. Yes healthcare is broken. One solution you mention is “more regulation”. Isn’t this what put us in this mess? Since when has regulation ever improved access, decreased cost and improved quality? I believe free market approaches are started to win in healthcare space.
Extremely well said!
🔊 "You cannot scale your way out of America's healthcare problem". WOW WOW WOW! Thank you for articulating this. Where does this sudden exit leave patients who bought into the hype of what these massive retailers-turned-primary care supposedly offered? I'll tell you where it leaves them: scrambling to secure an appt with a new primary clinician whos office is 6 months out for new patients, missing out on important medication refills, missing important primary prevention and landing them in the ER for what could have been preventative care. 🙄 It shouldn't be this easy for a massive retailer to suddenly close up shop. This is a massive failure from a policy perspective. Moreover, the sudden exits of these so-called "healthcare disrupters" (Amazon, Walgreens, Optum, Walmart) in the market demonstrates so much. I'll let y'all form your own opinions instead of sharing mine. 😎
Corporate greed has chewed up mom and pop. The only reason it's impossible to survive in private practice is contracting. Primary care physicians cannot scale to leverage. Fortunately, for many community-surviving primary care doctors, large organizations have never learned to run a practice effectively and efficiently. I understand they subsidize because of the downstream revenue, but it is a terrible model. Let's recall that your mom and pop practice is like Cheers, "where everybody knows your name," and you are not handed a kiosk or a tablet when you check in. This model has to be preserved.
The decision by Walmart to exit the healthcare sector underscores a looming public healthcare crisis characterized by diminished access to healthcare, especially in underserved areas, increased pressure on existing healthcare facilities and a potential exacerbation of the healthcare workforce crisis due to professional burnout and dissatisfaction. These factors collectively threaten to degrade the quality of care and public health outcomes, highlighting the urgent need for systemic reforms. Such reforms must address the financial and operational challenges facing healthcare providers, improve conditions for healthcare workers and ensure that the healthcare system prioritizes patient care and accessibility. Without significant intervention, these trends will lead to a healthcare crisis marked by strained resources, reduced access to care and worsened health outcomes for the broader population. We are witnessing the implosion of the U.S. healthcare system.
Commercial efforts to improve health care in the US aren't going to do anything to improve incentives, no matter how good the tools + technical services get. And changing (or even proposing/threatening to change) the incentives is going to make commercial health care less appetizing to investors, unless there's s good (or at least reasonable) way to predict ROI. It is tempting to wonder what a robust and well-run "marketplace" for health services might actually look like in the US, who would actually receive prenatal care, ER visits, drug research, hospice care, blood pressure meds, insulin, etc. and who would actually end up paying for it.
Physician | Founder, Physician Side Gigs | LinkedIn Top Health Voice | Keynote Speaker
10moI’ve seen many posts about how Walmart is launching a new venture with Roblox today, but not a lot about Walmart leaving healthcare yet - I'm biased, but I think this is the bigger story!