How Piedmont Healthcare Sells Patients on its New Walk-In Retail Clinics
// By Lisa D. Ellis //
Piedmont Healthcare’s prescription for staying current in the competitive marketplace includes partnering with Walgreens, one of the largest drugstore chains in the United States. To this end, Piedmont will take over operation of quick-care clinics in 27 Walgreens stores in the metro Atlanta region starting this August. This will enable Piedmont to provide easy-to-access locations where people can get a diagnosis and treatment for minor health concerns right from the convenience of the neighborhoods where they live and work. These clinics will offer a strategic complement to the system’s existing primary and urgent-care options.
Meeting the Needs that Exist
Matt Gove, chief consumer officer at Piedmont Healthcare
As a not-for-profit organization that operates seven hospitals and has more than 100 locations in the metro Atlanta area, Piedmont Healthcare serves approximately one million individuals annually. Yet despite the health system’s strong visibility and extensive offerings, there are still pockets of potential customers that Piedmont has not yet reached with its traditional structure, explains Matt Gove, Piedmont’s chief consumer officer (and member of the Editorial Review Board of our sibling publication eHealthcare Strategy & Trends). He says that’s where the Walgreens partnership comes in.
Gove points out that this new arrangement provides a strategic approach for the health system to try to fill in the gaps that exist and broaden out their demographics, while also following the latest trend to make health care more convenient for people juggling multiple priorities who don’t have time to visit an urgent care center or primary care physician for low acuity issues.