‘Consumer engagement is a huge part of healthcare’
Healthcare was Walmart’s fastestgrowing business sector last quarter. What do you see as the company’s big healthcare wins lately?
I’d say the things that we are very much focused on are the ways people utilize healthcare. There are days when they are leaving their homes and going into an office. We provide solutions for that; we’re growing that in-person care. We’re opening clinics in Florida this year and adding additional clinics in Arkansas where we already have a presence. When people need to see someone, whether it’s on a Saturday or a Sunday, we want them to be able to have that in-person care by our clinical team.
The second piece of that is people are not just looking for primary care. For many people, they need dental and optical care. Sometimes they need help with understanding their health benefits. We provide optical and dental care within the same primary-care site. And we have community health workers to help people understand their health benefits. We’ll also help them with any other health challenges. So that one single source and place to get all of your healthcare needs is what we have—in person.
There are people, however, who’d like to receive their care virtually. I’m one of those people. And what I’m looking for is, again, that easy access. Walmart today is only in a number of states. As we continue to expand that business, a telehealth business that we acquired last year, which is now called Walmart Health, allows us to provide virtual healthcare across the country to anyone.
In our telehealth offerings, we not only include virtual health for adults but we also launched a program specifically for teens, recognizing the needs of that population. We also have a virtual COVID-19 program where you can see someone for your symptoms, you can be prescribed medications and then you can have those filled at one of our pharmacies in real time. In some of our locations, we will also deliver that to your home the same day. So we’re really attempting to allow people to get healthcare the way they need it without disrupting the rest of their life.
How would you describe adoption for both the primary-care clinics and telehealth?
Adoption has been pretty amazing. For our clinics and some of our sites, we’ve seen growth of 80% yearover-year. We’ve also seen (net promoter scores) somewhere in the 80s, which is pretty incredible for us as an organization. We’re seeing people lining up for specific services, even if they’ve seen their clinician in person for their follow