Doctor Walmart will see you now

WITH HIS long white coat, stethoscope, genially soothing manner and wonky eagerness to discuss “population health management” and “patient-centred” medicine, Ronald Searcy seems the Platonic ideal of a primary-care doctor. The most unusual thing about him is where he works: a compact facility complete with examination rooms, dentist’s office, phlebotomy lab and X-ray room tucked into a Walmart in north-west Arkansas. Since 2019, Walmart has opened 32 of these “health centres” in five states; by the end of next year it plans to more than double that number, and expand into two more states.