Walgreens confirmed in June that it planned to open three Take Care Health Clinics — or retail, walk-in health clinics — in three of its Wichita drugstores by the end of July with at least two more to open by the end of the year (officials later increased that to three).
Now it looks like that won’t be happening until at least August. Walgreens spokespeople for the Take Care clinics aren’t saying why. In an e-mail to The Eagle, a Walgreens spokeswoman with a New York public relations/marketing firm said:
“Yes, the clinics are on hold for now. Unfortunately, I don’t have many more details to share at this time, but only can say that I will let you know as soon as we can confirm their operation start date.”
2 Comments
Wichita Eagle: Please pursue this situation to determine why this positive option is being held up.
I’d like to see more progress with these but from probably a slightly different perspective. Since my parents were both in medicine I am probably a bit more ‘medically literate’ than many. However, I can see a role of a ‘retail clinic’ in conjunction with a person’t ‘medical home.’ It is often diffficult to get medical advice in ‘real time’ (night and weekend for example). If a clinic coud handle the simple stuff and then leave ‘real’ issues for the DR we might all benefit. Also, from my own perspective, being able to get routine tests done at convenient times (and then commuicated to my DR) would be a definite benefit.
I don’t see these clinics as replacing the traditional DR-patient relationship but rather supplementing it.