Wal-Mart and Dell team up to offer electronic health records to physicians

Posted Mar 12th 2009 5:03PM by Brian White
Filed under: Products and Services, Dell (DELL), Wal-Mart (WMT)

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) will hook up with PC maker Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) to enable physician offices across the U.S. to have electronic health record availability. It will also sell data information management systems to clinics and doctor's offices in cooperation with Dell. In other words, Wal-Mart may be planning to expand beyond traditional retail and into health care. Again.

Wal-Mart, according to The New York Times, will use its purchasing power to buy laptop PCs and software from its vendors and then offer solutions based on those items to healthcare practitioners across the U.S. The impetus? Why, the recently-passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's promise of funds for health care providers committed to moving Information Technology beyond where it is today. Wal-Mart obviously wants a slice of that action.

Leave it to the world's largest retailer to give physicians the buying power of Wal-Mart to help them meet the criteria for federal recovery funds. However, if there is no advantage to existing physician costs to implement these IT solutions, Wal-Mart's effort won't go far at all. According to Ryan Howard of Practice Fusion, that is precisely why he is confused about Wal-Mart's announcement.

Tags: dell, inc., wal-mart, wal-mart stores, Wal-martStores, WMT

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-13-2009 @ 12:30PM

roudy11z said...

Ryan Howard need not be confused where WMT is concerned.New things must be tried and tested and who better to do it than WMT? Win or lose at least they are always trying. I want and have my money in a company like this. I know they have made mistakes but they are still here.RoudMan