CVS Will Offer Glasses And Hearing Aids In Stores As Pilot Project

Would you like to be able to take care of even more of your health care during a visit to CVS? The drugstore chain announced today that it will experiment with adding two new services to its retail stores, piloting hearing aids in some stores and optical clinics in others. The clinics will have audiologists and optometrists on staff respectively.

“By expanding our retail health offerings into vision and hearing services, we are providing customers a convenient, single destination on their path to better health,” Andrew Sussman, president of the in-store MinuteClinics, said in a statement, before going on about how CVS no longer sells cigarettes.

The test markets for The Hearing Centers at CVS/Pharmacy, as they’re calling it, will be seven few stores near Dallas, TX and Cleveland, OH. They cite research showing that it takes people an average of seven years to come to terms with their hearing loss and seek help.

If help is available six days a week right in the same store where they pick up their prescriptions, the logic goes, perhaps people would seek help for their hearing issues sooner.

The eye clinic works on a similar principle, making prescription glasses and contacts available to people in a place that they may already visit at least once a month to pick up prescriptions. (Walmart, it’s worth noting, already offers both optical and hearing services in some of its stores.)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist