UnitedHealth's Optum digs in to retail health market

Recent purchase of MedExpress gives major boost to insurer's business for walk-in, low-acuity treatments and well as health and wellness services.

UnitedHealth Group,the nation’s largest insurer, is investing in retail health clinics, seeing a big opportunity to bring basic primary and urgent care to the masses with value-added services.

For starters, UnitedHealth is buying MedExpress, a national retail clinic chain with 140 locations across 11 states, for an undisclosed sum.

MedExpress was founded in 2001 by a group of emergency care physicians in West Virginia who were frustrated with the chaotic state of emergency room care for both patients and clinicians, and now UHG’s Optum is bringing it in as a way to scale its consumer-focused business in the $15 billion convenient care market.

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“MedExpress has set the highest standards of care quality, convenience and compassion for patients in the communities it serves,” said Optum CEO Larry Renfro, who added that the company is planning on “expanding this progressive and successful approach.”

Headed by Lisa Tseng, MD, who pioneered another UHG subsidiary’s low-cost hearing aid business, Optum already has a convenient care division, with nine Optum Clinics, seven in Texas, one in Las Vegas and another in Kansas.

The Optum Clinics are offering the usual range of walk-in urgent care for sprains, infections and other health issues, as well as wellness care, chronic disease help and even cosmetic services. The clinics offer free WiFi and are usually in a retail setting near grocery stores and mini-malls. The Optum Clinics suggest that United sees a major market for both low- and high-end retail health services, for everyone from low- and middle-income families on high deductible plans to higher earners who also want convenience and a good deal.

Increasingly, Americans “want on-demand healthcare," Tseng told the Houston Chronicle last year.  "They want to be able to get in when they are not feeling very well. This is a need we are trying to address."

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The first of the Optum Clinics opened last year in Houston — one of several major metropolitan areas around the country that has seen a boom in urgent care centers, sometimes to the chagrin of local health systems and medical practices who are losing their low-acuity business.

The Optum Clinics, staffed by physician assistants and nurse practitioners and open from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends, offer the typical array of basic primary care, with physicals, well-woman exams, weight loss help, lab and x-rays, and care for back pain, fractures and sprains, as well as diseases like asthma or hypertension.

And they also offer cosmetic services: wrinkle relaxers, chemical peels, facials, volume enhancers, clay masques and microdermabrasion.

The Optum Clinics take insurance, including from UHG’s competitors, but some other walk-in clinic chains they’re also offering membership options: for instance, $19 a year for unlimited blood pressure checks, immunization screenings, annual head-to-toe skin checks and hearing tests with a discount on hearing aids. For $39 there is the “Optum Beauty membership” with an annual “skin and aesthetic consultation for the face and neck,” a “VIP invitation to medical spa events and skin care seminars,” and discounts on cosmetic and skin treatments.

For UHG and Optum, the acquisition of MedExpress could be a way to scale that kind of hybrid convenient care model, and give it a key differentiator among the 1,500 or so 1,500 walk-in clinics around the country at CVS stores, Walmarts, Walgreens and free-standing strip mall locations operated by regional and national chains as well as some local hospital systems.

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Incorporating MedExpress into Optum creates an opportunity to “integrate Optum care management and clinical programs with MedExpress’ services, simplifying patient access to health resources and treatment options in their community,” the company said. UnitedHealthcare’s membership is the largest in the country, at some 40 million, with 2 million of them in Medicaid plans and more than 500,000 in new exchange plans across 23 states—including several with MedExpress clinics, among them Florida and Pennsylvania.

For health systems and medical practices, the new competition may raise concerns, but it is not too late, said Lisa Bielamowicz, MD, the chief medical officer at the Advisory Board Company.

“The game and competitive factors by which you win primary care business are starting to change. Health systems and physician groups have to understand that. If there’s a Walmart clinic open 15 hours a day, that’s the standard you may have to meet,” Bielamowicz said in an interview last fall. “No doubt that consumers of any income level want convenience and availability for basic care, and these factors can trump doctor-patient relationships, especially for younger patients.”

Twitter: @AnthonyBrino