In a growing trend of retail strategies being employed in healthcare, HealthPartners, a Minnesota nonprofit healthcare provider and insurerannounced Wednesday that it is opening a retail location to provide a convenient setting for seniors and individual buyers of health insurance.
The location at the Ridgedale Center mall in Minnetonka will be staffed by licensed agents. It is opening in time for the Medicare open-enrollment period and the store will be operational until Dec. 7, the last day of open enrollment.
“We know that shopping for individual health insurance or a Medicare plan can be complicated,” said Andrea Walsh, HealthPartners executive vice president, in a news release. “We want to meet our members, prospective members and their families where they live their lives and help them make smart, informed choices about their healthcare coverage.”
The store is a first in Minnesota, but HealthPartners is not the only health entity going down the retail path. In September, insurance giant UnitedHealthcareannounced that it was opening 10 Medicare retail stores across the country and planned to open 20 additional stores in the weeks leading up to the open-enrollment period.
[Photo Credit: Service from Big Stock Photo ]
By Arundhati Parmar
Arundhati Parmar is the Medical Devices Reporter at MedCity News. She has covered medical technology since 2008 and specialized in business journalism since 2001. Parmar has three degrees from three continents - a Bachelor of Arts in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; a Masters in English Literature from the University of Sydney, Australia and a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. She has sworn never to enter a classroom again.More posts by Author
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