LSU health network partners with CVS, Walgreens

Louisiana State University’s (LSU) Health Sciences Center-New Orleans is partnering with CVS and Walgreens to expand its primary care reach.

LSU patients will be able to use clinics at CVS and Walgreens after hours and on weekends when network doctors are not available.

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“It’s a much lower cost way of providing care after regular office hours rather than going to an emergency room,” LSU Healthcare Network CEO Cathi Fontenot told the Daily Reveille.

Health Sciences Center Chancellor Larry Hollier said the partnerships are a way of expanding primary care reach while keeping overhead costs down. “Part of our strategic study has shown that LSU Health in New Orleans is not really recognized as taking care of the general population. We take care of the poor folks. We need to expand in primary care because we don’t have a large base in that.”

LSU patients who are treated at CVS and Walgreens will be charged a flat rate and will have access to a licensed nurse practitioner. Pharmacies will share information from those visits with the patient’s primary care physician.

“We have this relationship with CVS where our patients will be told that they can go and be seen there if they have an issue on the weekend because their data will then be transferred to our physicians, our medical records,” Hollier reportedly said. “We will have an interface with their electronic health records.”

Additionally, the licensed nurse practitioners can refer walk-in patients to specialists and primary care physicians within the LSU system. Hollier said about 25% of patients at the walk-in clinics do not have a regular doctor.

“Don’t be alarmed if you see the LSU logo at the Minute Clinics in CVS,” LSU President F. King Alexander said. “That’s a partnership that we have with them, and I have been reassured that we don’t have any liability associated with that, but we do get the marketing value of it and the partnership certainly helps CVS and it helps LSU.”

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