August 21, 2008

World’s largest retailer chain store opens telemedicine clinic

BY Dr. Keith J. Kaplan

A Wal-Mart store (Supercenter) in Houston has opened a telemedicine-based health care delivery system.

Similar stories have broke recently about health clinics in other large retail outlets such as Target that I have posted about and some have failed within a short time.  Other traditional health care providers, such as Mayo Clinic, as I have reported, have gone off the main campus to establish outreach offices.

I think this will soon expand to the laboratory setting as well with POC and the like. Imagine getting lab results, not only serum chemistries but also reads on tissue and body fluids when you are seen without waiting and see this a future market for laboratories.  Specimens collected and prepared at time of visit can be viewed with telepathology, without travel to central laboratory collection facilities or waiting for results.

The President of My Health Access, Inc. claims:

"Changing to a telemedicine-based health care delivery system allows us to substantially decrease out per patient overhead, while simultaneously increasing the level of care each patient receives,” said Kathleen Delaney, President of My Healthy Access. “…I have no doubt that this delivery system is the future of retail health care."

The firms claim that the Pearland location is the first retail health clinic to employ a telemedicine -based healthcare delivery system. Under the telemedicine model, physicians serve patients using remote telemedicine systems and protocols through paramedics who examine patients under direct supervision of a physician.

In late July, My Healthy Access and NuPhysicia signed a joint operating agreement with NuPhysicia for telemedicine clinics in select Houston-area Wal-Mart Supercenters.

My Healthy Access is a Houston-based provider of retail health care services to the urban marketplace. NuPhysicia is a private medical services company produced from the telemedicine program at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

OR

platinum partners

gold partners

Silver Partners

Media Partners