Many of you may have noticed that several large chains of pharmacies are installing medical clinics that replace a significant number of visits to urgent care and emergency room care services. Now, it looks like they may be adding fitness facilities to their pharmacies. The experimentation with Minute Clinics in such organizations as CVS were designed to treat a dozen of the more common reasons that people visit their doctor or urgent care such as a physical check-up needed for an application or participation in sports, colds, flu, cuts, bruises, stomach problem and so forth. To a large extent, these are satisfactorily diagnosed and treated by nurse practitioners. In the early stages, one of the pharmacies discovered that the insurance paperwork was so time-involving that they could not make a profit so they renegotiated with the majority of insurers to never charge over $60.00 if they never have to fill out any paperwork. Brilliant!
Walgreens has 6,800 retail locations in the US. They claim 68% of all Americans live within the five miles of a Walgreens. A very similar, travel radius that many health clubs think of when choosing a good site. Everyday over five million people enter Walgreens. The current goal is to put clinics in about a third of Walgreens.
Note that Walgreens has created a Health and Wellness division that does much more than treat scrapes and colds in their worksite pharmacies. They feature vision checking, X-ray facilities, and a fitness center. A Walgreens clinic within Disney World has five full-time primary care physicians. The clinic in their Toyota plant has dental care. Many of these operate 24/7 to accommodate a three shift workforce. The benefits to the employer are immediately clear since they keep each worker at work.
It’s unclear how expansive these full service health and wellness facilities will become among Walgreens 6,800 locations. But even if they only put fitness centers in 10%, Walgreens becomes one of the largest, most widely geographically distributed health clubs in the United States.
Club call to action: For your club to continue to compete, you might truly have to become a health and wellness center and not simply a fitness center. Again and again as fitness opportunities become more prevalent and begin to compete on access and price, Walgreens has a clear edge in terms of its ability to locate itself at the very nexus of easy access across the country.
Tags: competitive distinction · COMPETITORS · Customer Service 1-4 · Differentiate or Die · Low Cost Model · Niche StrategyNo Comments
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