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Vincent Rajkumar: Primary Care is essential for well being of the public and healthcare cannot be merely transactional

Photo from Vincent Rajkumar/X

May 7, 2024, 10:48

Vincent Rajkumar: Primary Care is essential for well being of the public and healthcare cannot be merely transactional

Vincent Rajkumar shared a post by Jason Hartley, Regional Vice President of West Region of on X/Twitter:

“Primary Care is essential for the health and well being of the public. It is also profitable if you consider the money saved down the road on specialty care.

If medical centers look at which areas of medicine are ‘profitable’ and which are not to decide on investment, we lose.

Healthcare cannot be merely transactional. There has to always be a larger visionary goal. A non profit mindset. An altruistic impulse.

I do see many individual doctors and institutions approach healthcare with a benevolent non transactional mind set. We need more of this.

I don’t know how or why primary care clinics set up by Walmart and others did not make ends meet.

For them it may be the right business move since they are for profit retail chains that just tried their hand at healthcare and found they are losing more money than they can bear.

I’m looking at the larger state of healthcare in the US. Without universal healthcare available in other developed countries, our health is dependent on what healthcare areas institutions want to expand, what insurance will cover, and our own personal wealth.

That’s not right.

People need rapid easy access to primary care. If that is not considered profitable and is not expanded, people find it hard to go see a doctor for preventive care or for day to day health problems.”

Quoting Jason Hartley’s post:

“Walmart Health closing down ops
Walgreens lost $6B operating VillageMD
CVS closing minute clinics
Oak Street losses are piling up
One Medical still unprofitable for Amazon.

Retail healthcare is hard.”

Further information.
Source: Vincent Rajkumar/X and Jason Hartley/X