HLTH21: Where Walmart is Focusing its Health Efforts in the Next 5 to 10 Years

As startups, tech giants and retail continue their descent on traditional healthcare, Walmart has a clear plan in place to distinguish itself from the pack.

The world’s largest retailer has more than 5,000 locations in the U.S. and offers consumers services ranging from online shopping to home grocery delivery.

At the same time, it’s made a handful of moves in the past several months alone to add virtual care, drug discount programs, a single unified electronic health record system for its clinics and (as of last week) a new partnership that will bring its low-cost pharmaceuticals to self-insured employees.Each of these efforts are pushing toward what Walmart’s health leaders say are its goalposts for the next several years: omnichannel care offerings that are low cost, equitable, trusted and meet consumers on their terms.

“I hear about how often Americans just don’t engage in their health, and I often think that that’s not the challenge of the individual,” Marcus Osborne, senior vice president at Walmart Health, said during a HLTH 2021 session. “If people aren’t engaging, you haven’t created the solution that allows them to engage. They do want to engage.”

In a keynote session, Cheryl Pegus, M.D., executive vice president of health and wellness, told Fierce Healthcare Senior Editor Paige Minemyer that the retailer has been seeing a greater appetite for consumer-friendly health offerings from its customers and business partners.

She said Walmart’s large volume of diverse assets gives it a front-row spot in supporting Americans’ clinical care, personal health behaviors and “the largest unmet health need in our country”: access to fresh foods.
“Healthcare is more than just going to see a doctor,” Pegus said. “I think we all know that, but I think we forget that in healthcare we should provide all of those other assets and services as well, which is part of what we’re sharing with people here today.”

Most of those services are either already among Walmart’s offerings or within immediate reach, Pegus said. Importantly, both executives stressed that they can all be offered in tandem and from a variety of physical and digital touch points.

In one hypothetical scenario, a parent could order groceries for in-store pickup through a Walmart app and receive a reminder that they need to pick up a refill of their prescription, Pegus said. Upon arrival, they could ask a health professional specific questions about the dosing, receive an annual vaccination and schedule a dental cleaning for their child.

“That’s not something we have to go build—we now have all of those assets and capabilities and are doing it,” she said.

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