For rural and lower-income Americans, staying healthy will become more time-consuming, with longer drives and wait times for doctors, following Walmart’s decision last month to exit the primary care business, experts say.
Walmart announced on April 30 that it would close all 51 Walmart Health centers in five states and shut down its virtual health care service because it was “not a sustainable business model.”
The move marked a sudden shift for the giant retailer, which had said the previous month that it planned to expand its virtual 24/7 health care — which includes video, chat and calls — and its brick-and-mortar health centers, which were open during the same hours and days as its stores and staffed by primary care physicians and licensed nurse practitioners.
The shift also reflects bigger economic challenges in health care, which is struggling with low government reimbursements for primary care, a shortage of nurses and doctors, and soaring costs for supplies and labor, experts said.
What happens to those Americans now?
For patients in rural areas or areas with limited resources served by Walmart, the closings will mean difficulty finding health care in the near term and traveling longer distances once they do, said Hal Andrews, chief executive of healthcare consulting firm Trilliant Health.
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“People will have to go back to driving to a big city,” Andrews said. “Going to the doctor will take an entire day….
