Practice Management
CEO Tim Barry, the founder and top executive of VillageMD, is stepping down from his role as the company faces significant financial difficulties. Majority owner Walgreens Boots Alliance has reported substantial losses amounting to billions of dollars, according to Forbes. VillageMD has struggled for more than a decade to attract patients to its clinics located within Walgreens retail stores. This has led to a sharp reduction in its intended expansion plans to stand up clinics …
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The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently posted an “in progress” recommendation statement for clinicians to screen for intimate partner violence and caregiver abuse in primary care settings. The proposed statement is open for public comment until November 25, 2024. The USPSTF suggests that clinicians screen pregnant and postpartum women as well as women of reproductive age for signs of intimate partner violence. However, it determined that there is insufficient evidence to recommend either …
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Attempts to disrupt or supplant primary care haven’t gone as planned for a number of ambitious start-ups. After raising more than $600 million and reaching a valuation of $1 billion, Forward has abruptly canceled already-scheduled patient visits, disabled its app, and began shutting down its clinic locations last week. The Forward model was based on cash payment for direct primary care backed by tech-enabled care automation. Reportedly, the company had technical issues with its automated …
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Cleveland Clinic has created a partnership with Amazon’s One Medical to bring new primary care clinics to northeast Ohio. The first clinic will open in 2025 with plans for future expansion, according to a press release. One Medical has membership-based services with a targeted focus on employer groups, now covering employee populations for about 10,000 employers. It provides same-day appointments and virtual care to members with a $199 annual fee (or $99 for Amazon Prime …
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Over the past 2 decades, urgent care has been on the forefront of consumerism. Increasingly, healthcare consumers are realizing how much they are contributing to the cost of healthcare delivery through taxes and payroll premium deductions, and therefore, they’re more motivated than ever to attain the full value of the benefits they’ve paid for. Urgent care has remained focused on the consumers’ sense of value by appealing directly to patients as clinics market their convenient …
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At the end of the year, more than 180,000 Google employees will no longer have the perk of One Medical primary care membership when the contract between Google and Amazon, the clinics’ parent company, ends, according to Healthcare Dive. Whether the action has anything to do with the recent questions about One Medical’s call center triage is anyone’s guess. Google was One Medical’s largest employer client. At one time, some Google offices featured on-site One …
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Humana is set to lease clinical space in Walmart Supercenter stores in 4 states, according to reports from Healthcare Dive. Twenty-three CenterWell Senior Primary Care and Conviva Care Centers clinics in Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and Texas will be ready to deliver care to seniors by the middle of next year. Insurance giant Humana—with its focus on Medicare Advantage—already operates 300 primary care centers in 15 states. Profit power push: Humana is one of many organizations …
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Walgreens recently completed the sale of 11 VillageMD clinics in Rhode Island to Arches Medical Partners (AMP), based in Boston. The sale is part of Walgreens’ broader initiative to boost profitability by divesting VillageMD primary care locations, following a period of weak fourth-quarter earnings in 2023. This week, the company announced 160 VillageMD clinics have been slated for closure—100 more than previously announced. The company recently exited the Florida market entirely and this week announced …
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After investing $5.2 billion in VillageMD in 2021, Walgreens initially had plans to open at least 600 Village Medical primary care clinics within Walgreens retail pharmacy locations in 30 markets by 2025, aiming to amass about 1,000 clinics by 2027. However, last week in what seems like a relative backpedal, Walgreens announced it is now closing all its VillageMD sites in Illinois and Florida, a Drug Store News story revealed. Illinois currently hosts 6 locations, and Florida …
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Forward, a primary care provider that touts its foundational belief that “healthcare should be a product, not a service,” has revealed its latest project: self-serve CarePods that rely on apps and artificial intelligence (AI) for health screenings. Resembling the private, closet-like lactation rooms offered at some airports, these AI-based modules are setting up shop in offices, malls, and gyms. With an initial launch in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, Forward’s CarePods require a …
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