Payment Issues Result in Closure of Wal-Mart Clinics
CheckUps on Jan. 18 closed 23 retail clinics that operated in Wal-Mart stores in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi because of an inability to make payments to nurses and other vendors, the New York Times reports.
CheckUps ended payments to some nurses in December 2007 and owes $108,000 to Med Tracker Personnel, an employment agency that provided nurses to the clinics, according to Stephanie Granda, an attorney for Med Tracker (Freudenheim, New York Times, 1/29).
CheckUps spokesperson William Armstrong said that the clinics will remain closed "at least temporarily" (Dorschner, Miami Herald, 1/30). According to Armstrong, CheckUps CEO Jack Tawil has entered discussions with investors and is "evaluating which of the operations in the retail stores they should keep open."
Wal-Mart on Monday raised concerns about the effect of the closure of the clinics on customers. Wal-Mart spokesperson Deisha Galberth said, "We are working to reopen the clinics as quickly as possible, whether or not they are operated by CheckUps" (New York Times, 1/29).