The New York Times-20080129-Operator of Walk-In Clinics Shuts 23 Located in Wal-Mart Stores

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Operator of Walk-In Clinics Shuts 23 Located in Wal-Mart Stores

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CheckUps, a start-up operator of walk-in medical clinics, has shut down 23 of the clinics operating in Wal-Mart stores in Florida and three other Southern states.

CheckUps, based in New York, fell behind in paying its nurses and other vendors late last year, apparently running short of cash to meet its bills, according to a lawyer for one of its creditors.

Nurses arriving for work at the clinics on Jan. 18 found them to be closed.

CheckUps stopped paying some of its nurse practitioners in December, and it owes about $108,000 to Medtracker Personnel, said Stephanie Granda, a lawyer for Medtracker Personnel, a Louisiana employment agency that provided nurses to CheckUps clinics.

Wal-Mart said Monday that it was concerned about the impact on clinic customers. It is obviously not a good thing that CheckUps has decided to close, said Deisha Galberth, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman.

Starting with three clinics it acquired in Florida, CheckUps added 20 more last year in Wal-Mart stores, expanding to Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

William Armstrong, a spokesman for CheckUps, said Jack Tawil, an entrepreneur who is chief executive of the privately held company, was talking to investors and evaluating which of the operations in the retail stores they should keep open.

Industry experts estimate that a company can consume $300,000 to $600,000 to finance a clinic and keep it running until it reaches a break-even point of 25 to 30 patients a day.

Wal-Mart has leased space to about 80 clinics in stores across the country, including the CheckUps clinics now closed. They are all operated by independent firms, including 13 by RediClinics, a unit of Steven Case's Revolution Health company, and two by hospital companies in Wisconsin and Florida.

While some of the Wal-Mart clinics are headed by doctors, most are run by nurse practitioners who are limited to providing routine medical care like giving flu shots or prescribing drugs for sore throats. Operators say their main clients are mothers with small children, and that about 30 percent do not have a family doctor.

Wal-Mart said it hoped the CheckUps clinics would not stay vacant for long.

We are working to reopen the clinics as quickly as possible, whether or not they are operated by CheckUps, Ms. Galberth said. CheckUps still holds leases on the spaces, which are typically near the store entrances, alongside eye-care centers and other convenience tenants that besides paying rent are meant to help Wal-Mart attract customers.

She said Wal-Mart was proceeding with plans to lease space for several hundred clinics in the next two years. Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's chief executive, said last year that the chain could serve as landlord to as many as 2,000 clinics by 2014.

Mr. Scott said Wal-Mart was looking for more hospital partners to add to the Aurora Health Care system in Wisconsin, which is already operating in seven stores in that state, and the North Broward Hospital District on Florida's east coast, which plans to open one soon.

Tine Hansen-Turton, the executive director of the Convenient Care Association, a clinics trade group, said Wal-Mart had also been discussing making leasing deals with independent clinic operators that would be affiliated with local and regional hospitals.