BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- What makes The Clinic at Wal-Mart different from the clinics that are currently operating in the retailer's stores is the brand, the affiliation with a local hospital and a common information technology platform.
The fact that Wal-Mart has also given a lot of thought to the way the clinics will look and operate is clear from a recent tour of the mock clinic the retailer has built in a warehouse near its home office.
The clinics encompass between 450 square feet and 550 square feet and feature open entrances partly screened with half walls, designed to be inviting to potential customers while still offering some privacy for the waiting rooms and the check-in desks.
The clinic itself has two exam rooms--one large enough to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the other somewhat smaller. There is also a rest room and a lab area.
'What's nice is that the design helps the flexibility of the staffing model,' says Alicia Ledlie, senior director of health business development at Wal-Mart. 'The clinic could potentially be staffed by just one person, or there could be as many as four--including one dedicated to checking people in at the front desk.
'From the beginning we thought it was important to have more than one exam room to allow for that, so the clinic can handle the growth in demand over time.'
Ledlie points out that a smaller clinic with just one examination room might find it difficult to see and treat enough patients to be profitable.
'There are some widely quoted statistics out there about how many patients a clinic needs to see to break even,' she says. 'These are not our numbers, they're from the industry, but they suggest 17 to 22 patients per day as a rule of thumb.
'And with just one exam room it's probably going to be very difficult to get beyond breakeven and be profitable over time.'
Some clinic operators might try to address the revenue and profitability issues by expanding the scope of services they offer, and getting into deeper kinds of care. The risk there is that such an approach would likely lead to longer visits, as well as longer waiting times.
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'We felt it was important to have a limited scope and to be able to deliver on that promise of convenience and efficiency,' Ledlie says.
That convenience factor is one of the reasons Wal-Mart is interested in having clinics in its stores, just as it also has banks, nail salons, branded fast-food restaurants and other businesses. Such services contribute to the perception that Wal-Mart offers consumers a true a onestop-shopping option.
'We also have looked at whether or not having a clinic creates a greater awareness of Wal-Mart as a destination for health and wellness, and we think that it does,' Ledlie says.
