Another undeniable sign that commercialization of health care is making meaningful inroads on Main Street with the late June partnership announcement between the laboratory chain Quest Diagnostics (Madison, N.J.) and retail giant Walmart (Bentonville, Ark.), as well as the subsequent announcement between LabCorp (Burlington, N.C.) and Walgreens (Deerfield, Ill.). The co-branded testing sites expand the presence of alternative health care delivery settings with the stated goals of increasing access, improving outcomes, and, potentially, lowering costs. The collaboration will launch with 15 locations in Walmart stores in Florida and Texas by the end of 2017. Initially, these sites will just provide testing services, but over time are expected to expand to include other basic health care services. Retail-lab partnerships have been viewed as a potential win-win opportunity for both partners—driving foot traffic in both pharmacy and front-end retail and generating incremental volumes for labs through greater retail real estate exposure for their patient service centers (PSCs), with the added benefit of increasing convenience and access for consumers. Quest has been adding to its consumer-facing offerings in recent years including through its 100-plus companybranded PSCs at Albertsons companies’ grocery stores (Safeway, Vons, Randalls, and Tom Thumb) in California, Colorado, Maryland, Oregon, Texas, […]