Advocate Health Care closes approximately 50 clinics operating inside Walgrens in the Chicago area. … (+)
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Advocate Health Care, the largest medical care provider in the Chicago region, closed 47 clinics in Walgreens for nearly a decade, and confirmed the health system and the pharmacy giant on Wednesday.
This step comes at a time when retailers and their health system partners are working to reach a successful model for delivery of health care in a pharmacy and retail outlets and other frequent places while Walgrens, in particular, focuses the company in hundreds of store closing operations.
Indeed, Walgreens has lost billions of dollars in its investment in the clinic operator covered with Villagem doctors and works to get out of this relationship after she was the outpatient care provider to attract patients. Last year, Walmart closed Walmart Health clinics, and about half of them are now being managed by the Humana Health Insurance Company.
Meanwhile, since its acquisition, CVS Health has advanced OAK Street Health, which was valued at $ 10 billion in 2023 to open the initial health centers that focus on senior people throughout the country. Amazon, who also has a relationship with Advocate Health Care, which includes the referral of Amazon medical care patients to the local provider for more specialized care, on Wednesday that it signed a similar relationship with the Montefiore Health system in Witchester Province in New York.
Walgrens has been trying to know the retail health care form for nearly a decade. Advocate and Walgrens said at the time that the lawyer acquired the clinics, which Walgrens started for the first time in 2016, saying that she is moving “enhances care coordination for patients, while enhancing comprehensive comfort and access.”
In the advocate advertisement on Wednesday, the health care system said it “made a decision to transfer operations in our lawyer clinics in Walgrens, Illinois, as of February 6, 2025.”
“This allows us to focus on additional ways. Patients prefer to reach care, when and where they need them, including expanded virtual services that provide care for their home, as well as access to urgent care and primary care sites in society,” the lawyer said in his statement. “This also includes our recently announced investments on South Side in Chicago, where we open neighborhood care sites in comfortable and familiar places such as churches and community centers. We also boost the outpatient clinic in the village .
The lawyer said last month that the health system spends one billion dollars to re -invent health care on the southern side of Chicago in the neighborhoods, where there is a 30 -year -old gap compared to the wealthiest northern side.
ADVOCATE Investment includes $ 300 million of land purchases and relevant spending to build a new hospital that replaces an facility of more than a century. More than $ 500 million will be allocated to expanding executives to care for outpatient clinics that it will be “integrated into society.” More than 200 million dollars will be invested in programs and services in hospitals and external patients partly designed to address the social determinants of health such as expanding access to healthy foods, housing, transportation and prescribed medicines.
“All our 47 clinics in Illinois are owned by assistants from the medical office, along with additional doctors who support virtual care,” the lawyer said on Wednesday. “We are closely cooperating with Walgrens to move in this transition and we will support employees by working to find alternative roles within our institution that is in line with their skills and preferences.”
For its part, Walgrens said that she “is closely cooperating with the lawyer to move in this transition.”
“Walgrens now offers comfortable visits and reasonable prices on the Internet in Illinois,” Walgrens said on Wednesday. “Through virtual health care, patients can see a nurse doctor or nurse, obtain a diagnosis and fill medical prescriptions as needed from home comfort for a set of cases, including urgent care needs, coughing, cold problems and sinuses, influenza, 19, pink Eye, sensitivity, asthma and sexual health.
