H-E-B expanding fleet of wellness primary care clinics in Texas

Dive Brief:

H-E-B recently opened two new wellness clinics in the Houston area, with two more slotted to open in the area later this June, according to a Monday press release.
Each H-E-B Wellness Primary Care Clinic offers full-service primary care to individuals age 12 and older as well as physical therapy and health and nutrition coaching. They are staffed with clinical pharmacists, nurses, board-certified physicians and registered dietitians, and can provide specialty referrals.
The opening of new clinic locations builds on an industry-wide trend of grocers continuing to emphasize health and wellness for their shoppers.

Dive Insight:

With the addition of the two new Wellness Primary Care Clinics, at 6711 S. Fry Road in Katy, Texas, and 24224 Northwest Freeway in Cypress, Texas, H-E-B now has three of the clinics in the Houston area. The two additional clinics coming at the end of this month will be located in Spring, Texas, and in the far northwest area of Houston, according to the announcement.

H-E-B already has a clinic open in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of Houston as well as locations in Austin, Texas, and San Antonio. Every H-E-B Wellness Primary Care Clinic can be found in the same shopping center as one of the grocer’s stores, the press release noted.

The clinics offer individual visit pricing as well as the option of monthly subscriptions to avoid patients receiving “surprise medical billing,” per the announcement, and also accept cash, credit and flexible spending account payments.

The grocer launched its health and wellness platform, called H-E-B Wellness, in May 2022, joining medical and pharmacy services, nutrition counseling and product merchandising.

Health and wellness initiatives continue to become a focal point of grocers’ offerings. Last year, Kroger Health debuted its food-as-medicine playbook, aiming to connect healthy eating to disease prevention. The grocer offers telenutrition, food boxes, a nutritional scoring system called OptUp and Welsana, a diabetes prevention program.

In February, Albertsons launched an online platform, “Sincerely Health,” which is designed to help customers make informed decisions regarding nutrition, exercise, sleep and self-awareness as well as reward them for meeting health-related goals.