Merchant Medicine is a research and consulting firm in the field of walk-in medicine, or more technically non-emergent acute ambulatory care without an appointment.  The company’s primary focus is to help health systems and physician groups, as well as investors and suppliers, sort out their strategic options in the face of the growing convergence of convenient care, urgent care, work-site care, primary care and emergency medicine.  In fact, the company has coined the term, ConvUrgentCare™ to capture what is going on in the field.  Merchant Medicine collects market data and employs strategic frameworks to help clients assess available market size, competition, growth, and reimbursement trends, all of which helps construct realistic proforma P&L statements.

Tom Charland has more than 25 years experience in general management, sales and strategic planning. He has been a key player in retail medicine since its market emergence in early 2000. He was senior vice president of strategy and business development at MinuteClinic from the early stage - when the company was known as QuickMedx - through the establishment of MinuteClinic’s relationship with CVS Pharmacy. He is credited with helping to move MinuteClinic from a cash-only regional player to a mainstream national clinic network by convincing national health insurers to put MinuteClinic into their networks and building MinuteClinic’s employer and broker relations program.

He has also been involved in several company turnarounds. At Digital Cyclone Inc., a mobile applications technology company where Charland was CEO, he helped the company emerge after the Internet bubble into a pioneer in cell phone applications. That company was acquired by Garmin, the satellite navigation company. At Control Data Systems, a software development and systems integrator where he was managing director of the applications development division, Charland led several groundbreaking health care application projects, including the back-end infrastructure for Inoveon, a leading national remote diabetic retinopathy screening company. Control Data Systems was acquired by British Telecom.

Charland is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development. He is a 1980 graduate of the Boston University College of Communications.

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  ConvUrgentCare Strategy Symposium, January 22-24, Scottsdale, AZ



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  Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, Febrary 9-10, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA



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  Doctors Express Annual Franchise Meeting, March 6-8, Las Vegas, NV



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   JD Power Service Excellence Summit, March 20-21, Scottsdale, AZ