West Lebanon
The drugstore chain, citing a low level of business, on Jan. 1 closed its medical clinic inside the CVS store at the Upper Valley Shopping Plaza, which the chain opened in 2013. The West Lebanon clinic was among the first that Rhode Island-based CVS launched in New Hampshire.
Minute Clinics are staffed by nurse practitioners who treat everyday medical problems from minor ear, eye and throat infections to sprains and light wounds, basic health and cholesterol screenings, camp and DOT physicals, smoking cessation assessment and pregnancy tests.
“The decision to close this clinic was made because the clinic was not as active as others in the area,” said a CVS representative in an email.
CVS has five other drop-in Minute Clinics in New Hampshire in Concord, Nashua, Manchester, Salem and Manchester. All remain open.
Parent company CVS Caremark Corp., bought the fast-expanding Minute Clinic chain in 2006 and now has more than 1,100 locations in 33 states and Washington, D.C., although none in Vermont. Launched in Minneapolis-St. Paul under the name QuickMedX in 2000, Minute Clinic was one of the early pioneers of drop-in care designed to provide a low-cost alternative to ER and other urgent care visits.
Treatment for routine ailments typically costs between $89 to $129 per visit. Medicaid is accepted at New Hampshire locations.
“They didn’t give us a lot of information” about the reasons for closing Minute Clinic,” said Matthew Sargeant, CVS store manager in West Lebanon. “I think maybe the urgent care clinic in Lebanon had something to do with it. … Yeah, it’s kind of a bummer.”
Another urgent care clinic, ClearChoiceMD, opened in the Miracle Mile shopping plaza in 2014. ClearChoiceMD, owned by New London-based emergency room physician Dr, Marcus Hampers, now has five locations each in New Hampshire and Vermont and one in Maine.
The number of walk-in medical clinics designed to handle common ailments has burgeoned in recent years as accessing traditional health care providers has become costlier and more cumbersome.
So-called “retail clinics” — named because they frequently are located in shopping centers in storefront-like settings — typically occupy 150 to 250 square feet, cost between $50,000 to $250,000 to build out, and can generate upward of $500,000 annually, according to research by health care consulting firm Mannat Health.
The typical clinic sees 10 to 30 walk-in patients per day, the report said.
There are now 53 licensed walk-in clinics in New Hampshire, according to the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, up from 20 in 2012. Although clinics are not required to notify the state regulators when they close, they must keep patient records for up to seven years and make them available upon patient requests, a department representative said.
John Lippman can be reached at 603-727-3219 or jlippman@vnews.com.
