Walgreens Health Clinic Faces Political Trouble In Boston

(MoneyWatch)  A new wrinkle in the debate over retail health clinics is emerging in Massachusetts, where drugstore giant Walgreens is running into political opposition over its plans to open a Take Care clinic in one of its Boston stores.

For-profit retail clinics typically offer basic care for minor problems from nurse practitioners. Their first critics were doctors, who argued that the clinics couldn't provide comprehensive care, but who also undoubtedly resented the competition. The clinics have since expanded rapidly, usually piggybacking on established retailers such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens rival CVS Caremark.

The story is a little different in Boston, where Mayor Thomas Menino and members of his public health commission object to Walgreen's plans to open a clinic in the city's Roxbury neighborhood, the Boston Globe reports. Their complaint: Competition from retail clinics might draw patients away from the state's network of community-health centers, which provide primary and preventive care to lower-income residents and the uninsured.

Although the Globe doesn't go into detail, the concern is presumably that drawing patient traffic from the community centers would eventually jeopardize their funding. Conversely, it could also reprise another familiar refrain in healthcare, which is that the new clinics would specifically draw off younger and healthier patients who cost less to treat, leaving the clinics with an older and sicker -- and thus more expensive -- population.

Here's how one commission official describes her issue with the clinic:

Barbara Ferrer, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, said last night that the Roxbury store where Walgreens wants to open a clinic sits within a few blocks of three community health centers, which provide a broad set of services with convenient hours.

"I can't imagine any scenario where we would be supporting this effort" by Walgreens, Ferrer said, unless the retail clinics complemented - rather than competed with - existing services at the community health centers.

It's not entirely clear how Walgreens could address the city's objections, since it's hard to imagine how the limited care available at a retail clinic might "complement" that of a community-health center. This might well be a battle the drugstore chain can't win.

In a broader sense, the Walgreens move sets up a competitive faceoff in the state with CVS, which hopes to open 10 MinuteClinic sites in suburban Boston, although none in the city itself. Walgreens aims to open 16 Take Care clinics across eastern Massachusetts, including Boston.

But the retail-clinic business has proven more challenging than many people initially expected. Last month, the WSJ reported that companies have recently closed 69 clinics in 15 states, largely because they weren't profitable enough. That sort of churn presents another concern to public officials, since there's no guarantee that a for-profit clinic will stick around, even if it drives community facilities out of business.

Hat tip: WSJ Health Blog
Photo of a Walgreens protest via Flickr user Editor B, CC 2.0