“Response to this has been nothing short of spectacular. We've generated $290 million in cost savings on drugs for our customers,” Mr. Scott said. In the last year, “35% of all orders we fill are for $4 prescriptions, and nearly 30% of these are filled without insurance.”
Mr. Scott pulled no punches about Wal-Mart's intention to push generics.
“It's about pharmacists and doctors working in new ways. The pharmacists will work with the doctors to determine if generics might be better choices. And we educate consumers about the efficacy of generics. We post full price disclosures. We encourage them to talk to doctors and to learn about generics,” he said.
If his belief in generic drugs is firm, his faith in information technology is nigh on evangelical.
Mr. Scott, who began his Wal-Mart career nearly 30 years ago in the trucking logistics department, is like many corporate leaders in nonmedical industries, who cannot understand why the bar-code tracking systems and standardized consumer databases that revolutionized retail and manufacturing several decades ago have not become the norm in health care. “Wal-Mart applies technology very intensively. We can track stuff all over the world. This lowers cost and streamlines operations, improves the quality of life for employers and customers. Wal-Mart can pinpoint a pallet of laundry detergent anywhere in our supply chain. I wish it were as easy for doctors to pull a patient's electronic files. They're still using manila folders!”
He seems baffled by the discrepancy between medicine's 21st-century therapeutic technology and its early 20th-century paper-based information systems.
The criticism is fair enough, but unlike retailers, physicians and other health care givers have little to gain financially from updating their information systems, and unlike pallets of laundry detergent, human beings have concerns about what sorts of information are recorded about them, how that information is used, and by whom it might be seen.
From RediClinics and the $4 prescriptions to the call for universal coverage and a shift away from employer-financed health care, nearly everything Mr. Scott has done thus far has attracted its share of ire. But the Wal-Mart CEO seems to have little time for critics.
“It is easier to sit on the sidelines and criticize what others are doing,” he said. “Those who do so are either stuck in an old debate or protecting their own parochial interests.”
RediClinics, which are housed inside Wal-Mart stores, are typically staffed by nurse-practitioners who have physician and hospital backup. ©Wal-Mart Inc.