Walgreens to expand health care services to include treatment of chronic illness

Apr 5 2013

The retail chain becomes the first to offer such extensive primary care through nurse practitioners and physician assistants at more than 300 in-store clinics in 18 states.

Kaiser Health News: Walgreens Becomes 1st Retail Chain To Diagnose, Treat Chronic Conditions
It's not just sore throats and flu shots anymore. Walgreens today became the first retail store chain to expand its health care services to include diagnosing and treating patients for chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes and high cholesterol. The move is the retail industry's boldest push yet into an area long controlled by physicians, and comes amid continuing concerns about health care costs and a potential shortage of primary care doctors (Appleby, 4/4).

The Associated Press: Walgreen Clinics Expand Care Into Chronic Illness
Walgreen Co. has expanded the reach of its drugstore clinics beyond treating ankle sprains and sinus infections to handling chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure. The company, based in Deerfield, Ill., said Thursday that most of its 370 in-store Take Care Clinics now will diagnosis, treat and monitor patients with some chronic conditions that are typically handled by doctors (Murphy, 4/4).

In other health care marketplace news -

Modern Healthcare: New Accretive CEO Plans To Bring Discipline
The new CEO at Accretive Health, the beleaguered revenue-cycle management company, faces the challenging task of moving the company beyond its immediate financial problems and the glare of national publicity stemming from its allegedly aggressive billing collection practices. The Chicago-based company on Wednesday introduced its new leader, Stephen Schuckenbrock, the former president of Dell Services. He was introduced by Accretive co-founder and current CEO Mary Tolan, who earned $3.9 million in 2011 and will be stepping down from that post (Kutscher, 4/3).