{"id":2101,"date":"2011-11-14T23:18:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T04:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:15:31","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:15:31","slug":"here-are-two-things-you-dont-hear-together-very-often-walmart-and-hiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/here-are-two-things-you-dont-hear-together-very-often-walmart-and-hiv\/2011\/11\/14\/","title":{"rendered":"Here Are Two Things You Don’t Hear Together Very Often: Walmart and HIV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As the parent of teenagers (and having been one myself many years ago), I’m acutely aware that everyone wants to think that he or she is special in some way.<\/p>\n

And while that is literally true (that is, no two people are exactly <\/em>alike), as anyone will tell you who looks up a Sunday\u00a0Times <\/em>crossword puzzle clue on Google, there are a whole lot of people out there very much like us — no matter how special we think we are.<\/p>\n

But here are four things about me that, cumulatively, probably put me into a very small percentage of Americans my age in 2011:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I have seen every episode of “Seinfeld” (several multiple times), but never watched a single “Friends”.<\/li>\n
  2. I have never eaten at an Olive Garden restaurant. (Would love to try — how is it?)<\/li>\n
  3. Despite half of my family being huge fans, I have never read any <\/em>of the Harry Potter series — not a chapter.<\/li>\n
  4. I have never shopped at a Walmart — in fact, I’ve never even been inside one.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This last one (a Walmart-less life) is not a conscious move, not a politically\/ethically driven avoidance. It just so happens that the places I spend most of my time are not conducive to shopping at Walmart, even though there are seven of them<\/a> within 15 miles of where I live.<\/p>\n

    Which is why this news, from NPR<\/a>, came as something of a surprise:<\/p>\n

    Wal-Mart wants to be your doctor…\u00a0The nation’s largest retailer is planning to offer medical services ranging from the management of diabetes to HIV infections<\/strong>, NPR and Kaiser Health News have learned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    If you don’t believe me, it’s right here<\/a> on page 7, “HIV management and monitoring”, along with more than a dozen other conditions that Walmart will manage as part of the proposal to become “the largest provider of primary healthcare services in the nation.”<\/p>\n

    Walmart later backed off this claim<\/a>, but still — you have to imagine they’re planning something <\/em>for 2014 when the federal health law kicks in. Could this be the “disruptive” idea that helps relieve an already bursting-at-the-seams primary care system?<\/p>\n

    And as the treatment for HIV gets better and better, and our patients live longer and longer, we should start expecting to see HIV along side of many other chronic medical diseases managed by all sorts of caregivers in all sorts of ways.<\/p>\n

    Will MinuteClinic<\/a> — the rhyme that’s not a rhyme — be next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As the parent of teenagers (and having been one myself many years ago), I’m acutely aware that everyone wants to think that he or she is special in some way. And while that is literally true (that is, no two people are exactly alike), as anyone will tell you who looks up a Sunday\u00a0Times crossword […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,8],"tags":[423,621,987],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-hiv","tag-minuteclinic","tag-walmart"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}