Hy-Vee, a Midwestern chain of supermarkets, is launching a new subsidiary to provide low-cost telehealth and online pharmacy services, it announced earlier this week.
The service will be called RedBox Rx and promises to offer quick access to a provider that can prescribe medication that is shipped for free to the patient. The service will not accept insurance, though it will accept tax-advantaged accounts to cover certain services. It will be available to anyone over the age of 18. RedBox Rx will offer treatment plans including men and women’s health, mental health, primary care and others. Telehealth consultations will cost up to $39 or be free.
“At Hy-Vee, health and wellness is a major component of what we strive to assist our customers with every day,” said Randy Edeker, Hy-Vee’s chairman, CEO and president, in the announcement. “We know that more people are looking for quick, convenient and personalized health care options shipped directly to their homes, and RedBox Rx does exactly that.”
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To deliver the services, RedBox Rx will be partnering and integrating with Reliant Immune Diagnostics and tapping into its nationwide network of clinicians.
The use of virtual care has exploded in the past two years, and many retailers are now jumping into the telehealth and digital prescription markets. Some key leaders in this space include Amazon and Walmart, both of which launched prescription discount programs earlier this year.
While telehealth use continued to increase overall in 2021, it has stabilized from the dramatic growth seen in 2020, according to results from the CHIME Digital Health Most Wired survey.
This year, 26% of healthcare organizations—including acute care, ambulatory care and long-term or post-acute care facilities—reported a quarter or more of their patients had used telehealth. That’s down from 32% in 2020 but significantly higher than in 2019, when only 7% said many patients had used telehealth services.
The number of beneficiaries in traditional Medicare using telehealth jumped 63-fold in 2020 from 840,000 in 2019 to nearly 52.7 million.