The sale of medicines has become quite less profitable urging pharmacies to finds ways on how to grow the business. 

Most U.S. top pharmacy chains sell beauty products in addition to the medicines they are already selling and remodel their stores to attract customers.  Pharmacies have discovered another source of growth through retail health clinics, which have been rapidly growing all over U.S. for the last few years.

Walgreens presently has 400 healthcare clinics scattered all around the country.  Its competitor CVS Health is farther in the race with almost a thousand clinic and has plans to expand further to 1,500 clinics by 2017. 

To shorten the gap, Walgreens recently announced its partnership with Providence Health and Services in which new clinics will open at Walgreens stores, but will be owned and operated by Providence together with its affiliates.

Since more people rely on their insurance coverage, the deficiency of primary care physicians (PCPs) is only expected to increase.  These clinics are going to address the growing need for easy-access and faster care that other settings don't offer.   

This in turn will drive sales of over-the-counter (OTC) and beauty products as visiting patients are possible to make additional purchases.

This is going to be a winning factor for both drugstores and patients as well as for hospital settings, in which they can utilize their resources for the treatment of more complex conditions.

The retail clinic partnership between Walgreens and Providence Health and Services will put care coordination, chronic care and interconnected electronic health records at the center of the effort.

The Providence and Walgreens clinics will be initially situated in the Portland, Oregon area and will be called Providence Express Care at Walgreens, and in Seattle it will be named Swedish Express Care at Walgreens. 

Mike Waters, senior vice president of physician services at Providence says, that there is room for expansion within those states or in other West Coast areas where Providence operates.