Walgreens has once again expanded its partnership with video visits company MDLive, adding behavioral health visits from Breakthrough Behavioral, which was acquired by MDLive in 2014.
Breakthrough Behavioral offers patients an alternative to in-person therapy sessions. Patients can use Breakthrough Behavioral's site to choose a licensed therapy professional based on their personal profiles and schedule appointments with one of the therapists. They can also search for a therapist by specialty, issue they wish to discuss, and location.
Through this partnership, Walgreens users in all 50 states will have access to behavioral therapy video visits offering via Walgreens’ website. Behavioral therapists on the platform will only be able to write prescriptions to customers in 20 states, however. Visits start at $60 apiece, though some of that cost could be covered by users' insurance.
“Access to providers and care is one of the biggest challenges for our mental health system today, and we’re pleased to work with MDLIVE to help meet this need as part of the Walgreens mental health platform,” Walgreens Divisional VP of Digital Health Adam Pellegrini said in a statement.
Walgreens first partnered with MDLive to offer telemedicine services in December 2014. Then in November 2015, Walgreens expanded its telehealth offering to 20 more states. Now, MDLive offers its medical visits service to Walgreens users in 37 states. Some of the newer states in the rollout include Arkansas, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Customers can access MDLive services through the Walgreens website as well as the mobile app. The cost per visit for medical concerns is $49 per visit.
Last year, at an event, Pellegrini said that since first announcing the MDLive partnership, his team has changed the way users interact with it. While initially, users had to install and launch the MDLive app separately to continue their session, he learned that a multi-app strategy was not effective in keeping Walgreens customers engaged.
