Popping the retail clinic bubble

Growth is slowing, and stores are thinking twice about the profit potential of retail clinics:

“We have seen fallout in this industry, on a smaller scale, that is not unlike the dot-com bubble,” says Tom Charland, the owner of industry consultant Merchant Medicine LLC and a former vice president for strategy at MinuteClinic. “The big mistake was for people to think they could reach break-even in six months,” he says. “People are learning this is an 18-to-24-month process to get to break-even.”

This is without the multi-million dollar malpractice lawsuits that will be sure to come. I would be interested to see how the industry survives that.