Putting “Retail” into Medicine

Here Be Dragons is the true story of what happens when you are bold enough to try to transform a hidebound, multi-trillion-dollar industry. Today, millions of people benefit every day from accessible, affordable healthcare at walk-in clinics close to their homes. They are open seven days a week, with extended weekday hours, and provide high-quality basic healthcare at reasonable prices that are transparently posted. In 2020-21, almost everyone in the United States benefited from the access to COVID-19 testing and vaccinations that these clinics provided.

But retail clinics did not emerge without a fight. They faced strong opposition from the medical establishment, overly restrictive government regulations, and skeptical third-party payers. They also faced consumers who were conditioned to believe that quality healthcare could only be delivered in in an office or a hospital on someone else’s schedule and without having any idea of its cost.

Physician practices and hospitals continue to play indispensable roles in patient care, but the massive U.S. healthcare system has not proven to be accessible or affordable enough for many patients and third-party payers. The system needed to be disrupted, and Web Golinkin was one of a relatively small number of people who have been able to do it.

However, this is not a book about unbridled success. Like many hero’s journeys, Web’s story is filled with bumps, bruises, and a few dragons along the way. Web began his journey by focusing on health information, starting the first 24-hour Cable TV network dedicated to health, America’s Health Network, which was eventually sold to Fox. He then helped to revolutionize healthcare with RediClinic, which placed medical clinics inside drug, grocery and big box stores and was later sold to Rite Aid. Most recently, Web was CEO of FastMed, one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing operators of urgent care clinics.

The fact that retail clinics are now a permanent part of the healthcare landscape is evidence of success, but getting to this point has been a wild and frequently very rough ride that challenged all the passion, endurance and street-smarts Web could muster at every step along the way.