Get a Checkup In Aisle 3

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Why do I feel so lousy? That's what Margaret Hillesheim, a grandmother of three, wondered when she woke up in her suburban Minneapolis, Minn., home a few weeks ago. She had an ugly cough and a stifling case of sniffles. What Hillesheim, 56, didn't have was an inclination to spend half the morning in a doctor's waiting room. Instead, she went to Cub Foods, her local supermarket. Specifically, she dropped by a tiny clinic nestled beside the store's pharmacy, just across from the cigarette counter. There, behind a frosted-glass partition, a nurse practitioner examined Hillesheim, typing her vital signs and symptoms into a computer before giving her a prescription to treat a sinus infection. The visit took 20 minutes and cost $59. Hillesheim forked over $25, the co-pay required by her insurer. "You don't have to plan your day around this doctor appointment," she says. "You just think, 'O.K., I'm going now.'"

Clinics like the one Hillesheim visited--that one run by the Minneapolis-based MinuteClinic--are expanding rapidly, popping up in Piggly Wiggly supermarkets and such drugstores as CVS and Rite Aid. Wal-Mart Stores, which has nine in-store dispensaries, has announced plans to bring the total to more than 50 this year. The clinics are open to employees as well as the public, allowing Wal-Mart to address two high-profile issues. The first is criticism that it doesn't provide medical coverage to enough of its 1.2 million U.S. employees. The second goes beyond Wal-Mart: the prospect that miniclinics not only provide better service for basic medical help but also can lower medical costs and make essential health care more accessible to the 46 million Americans who are uninsured.

Although policy wonks may debate the merits of discount doctoring, investors are jumping at the idea. MinuteClinic had 20 outlets up and running in two states last September. It now has 73 in nine states, and by the end of the year will have some 300 in 17 states. Pennsylvania-based Take Care Health Systems, co-founded by customer-service guru Hal Rosenbluth, who in 2003 sold his eponymous travel company to American Express for about $300 million, has 19 clinics in Oregon and Kansas and plans to match MinuteClinic's numbers by next year. Take Care just got $77 million, primarily from Chicago private equity firm Beecken Petty O'Keefe & Co., to help finance that expansion. RediClinic, a subsidiary of the Houston consumer medical-screening firm InterFit Health, has 11 clinics and got an injection of funds from Revolution LLC, the investment house launched last year by AOL founder Steve Case with $500 million of his online fortune.