Retail Health Clinics and Recession

We've talked quite a bit about the potentials of Retail Health Care Clinics on this blog and on the Mitigation Journal podcast. A retail health clinic is a clinic operated and located within a retail store such as Wal-Mart. These walk-in style clinics can be found in other areas like airports as well. Often, these privately operated clinics run within a profit margin and cater to those without health insurance.

Walk-in and retail health clinics are attractive because they are time and cost-effective. There have been questions of quality raised by medical associations in the last year, but no official complaints or awareness of errors have been noted. The trend throughout 2008 has been for these clinics to open and remain stable. That is stable until the shopping season tanked.

This article from Reuters talks about the possibilities of failure and impact on the economy when "big-box" stores decline due to economy and/or recession.