Walgreens Owned VillageMD Rethinks its Strategy

Walgreens’ investment in VillageMD is consistent with several other large retailers looking to take market share in healthcare services from traditional providers, including CVS, Walmart, Kroger and Amazon, who have attempted to leverage brand recognition and convenience to attract patents, each with mixed results. Clinics attached to retail stores face certain challenges, especially in highly competitive markets like Florida, including size limitation in existing stores that make it difficult to provide a wide array of medical services and the stigma felt by clinicians about working in retail store locations. As a result, Walgreens, along with Amazon, CVS and Kroger, have all begun to reassess how they operate their healthcare provider businesses and have begun to move away from the colocation model.