The world's largest retailer is making another attempt at healthcare, this time without hiring the doctors. Walmart announced the expanded Better Care Services on Monday, now running on General Medicine's "healthcare store" infrastructure, in a release. Customers can browse urgent care, lab tests and telemedicine for conditions from skin problems to weight loss, view out-of-pocket estimates based on their insurance alongside cash prices, and book through Walmart.com, the app or its Sparky assistant, Fierce Healthcare reported. Walmart decides which providers appear, while General Medicine runs the underlying platform and also offers care in some categories.
The platform itself is young. The company's bet is that people already buying prescriptions, groceries and cold remedies in its stores will use the same channels to find a clinician, with the resulting prescription filled at a Walmart pharmacy and potentially delivered with the rest of an order.
That approach marks a retreat from a far more ambitious plan. Walmart began opening doctor-staffed health centers beside its supercenters in 2019 and bought a telehealth company in 2021, then abandoned the effort in April 2024, saying rising labor costs and reimbursement pressure had created a "lack of profitability" that made the business "unsustainable" at that time," the company said in a statement. The new model shifts clinical risk to third-party providers and keeps Walmart in the roles it knows: merchandising, pricing transparency and fulfillment. None of those roles requires it to employ clinicians.
General Medicine brings a pedigree Walmart is familiar with. The startup was founded by the team behind PillPack, the online pharmacy Amazon acquired, and launched nationwide in May 2025, while recently closing a $120M Series B round earlier this month to broaden its care catalog. Its chief executive has said the infrastructure could power similar marketplaces for health systems, drugmakers and insurers. For Walmart, the platform is a way back into a market it walked away from.