FORT WORTH, Texas — A Walmart Health center at the Walmart Super Center in the East Chase Village shopping mall on Anderson Boulevard in Fort Worth will never open.
That's a huge disappointment for some customers like Bethany Aznavi.
Her visits to Walmart usually include loading up the family van with all the kids. Aznavi has been keeping an eye on the Walmart Health Center under construction. It's a facility she says her family needs, too. She's been to the Super Center enough to recall when construction first started.
"I shop here too much," Aznavi said, "Especially because we have four kids, so over time the bills add up. We basically tell our kids you can't get hurt because it's too expensive."
But right in the middle of construction here at the East Chase Village Walmart Super Center, the retail giant announced it's a no-go. This was one of five in DFW scheduled to open this month.
The retailer sent WFAA a statement saying, "today, Walmart made the difficult decision to close our Walmart Health centers and Walmart Health Virtual Care. Through our experience managing our centers and virtual care offering, we’ve determined this is not a sustainable business model for us. We remain committed to our overall healthcare business. This pivot will allow us to focus on our mature and nationally scaled Pharmacy and Optical businesses and expansion into healthcare products and services like the Walmart Healthcare Research Institute, where we can make a positive difference.
Walmart had plans to open five in North Texas this month, 10 in North Texas this year, and a total of 18 in Texas in 2024.
Professor Ateev Mehrotra is part of the Harvard Medical School staff who is no stranger to the retail giant's interest in health clinic services.
"Part of me that felt this was a little bit of Deja vu all over again," said Mehrotra.
The Harvard medical expert says he watched Walmart try medical centers a decade ago. Mehrotra had hoped this time Walmart would succeed for families needing primary care.
"Where are they going to go now? Again, the whole point here was that there were these clinics that were going to be located in communities where there was no other option. It's my understanding is these clinics are going to be shutting down very, very quickly and these patients won't have another place to go, which I think is obviously a travesty," Mehrotra said. "Over the past years, we've seen large hospital corporations do urgent neighborhood, urgent care centers. We saw CVS do its Minute Clinic."
Mehrotra is more concerned about families across the country not having access to primary care that is affordable. He says he doubts if the retail giant will make another run at it after failing to pull it off a second time.
The convenience of a health clinic at Walmart would have been a great thing for Bethany and her family, which she had already planned to visit.
"Yeah, it's a disappointment," said Aznavi.
(Note: This video was published April 11)
