The Walmart Urgent Care Odyssey Gets the Academic Treatment—and It’s Still a Puzzler

Walmart’s various forays into the healthcare space have fallen short of economic viability over a number of years. As such, it may be surprising that healthcare researchers and business schools haven’t devoted more attention to assessing why that is, or why the company continues to expend capital without much of a return to show. Finally, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business has taken a stab at it in an article published in the institution’s journal Knowledge at Wharton, but answers are still elusive. In the article, Wharton professor emeritus Mark Pauly suggests the question shouldn’t be why Walmart continues to plunge headlong into healthcare, but why not? In his opinion, Walmart (along with Amazon and other large retailers) views healthcare as “a lot of low-hanging fruit…so why not give it a shot?” That perspective, if on point, would reveal a basic lack of understanding of the economics of running an urgent care center or other practice successfully. An essential part of the challenge, as Pauly explains, is that Walmart has succeeded in part because it keeps labor costs low and tends to attract workers without specific expertise. “Healthcare is both labor intensive and requires specialized training,” the article notes. “There’s no self-checkout line for a broken arm.” For a more distinctly urgent care perspective, read Is Four Times a Charm for Walmart (or, Could Walmart Be a Threat to Urgent Care)? in the JUCM archive.