Jeanine Jiganti, senior vice president and general counsel for health and wellness at Walmart. (Courtesy photo.)

Pushing forward with plans to remake America's health care system, Walmart Inc. on Wednesday announced it has created the new legal position of senior vice president and general counsel for health and wellness. The company named Jeanine Jiganti, an experienced health care lawyer, to the post.

Jiganti, who will report to company general counsel Karen Roberts, begins the new job June 3. She joins Walmart at a time when health care lawyers are in huge demand across the United States.

In a memo to Walmart associates, Roberts wrote, “As we look to grow and improve our health and wellness services, Jeanine's knowledge and background in the health care industry will be invaluable in this newly created role.”

According to her LinkedIn profile, Jiganti has been running her own legal and compliance consulting company in Chicago for the past year. Before that, she served as senior vice president and chief compliance officer of Fortune 200 health care company DaVita Inc. for six years in Denver.

She previously served seven years as chief compliance officer for Takeda Pharmaceuticals, a year as general counsel of Near North Insurance Brokerage, and six years as vice president and head of litigation for Caremark International Inc., all in the Chicago area.

Before that, she was in private practice with Jenner & Block in Chicago and with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in the New York area. She earned her law degree from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

In a statement, Jiganti said, “It's exciting to join a company that is focused on helping people live better by providing affordable and accessible health and wellness services to millions of customers every week. Whether it's access to affordable medicine through its pharmacies, millions of free health screenings provided each year or low-cost immunizations given to its U.S. customers annually, Walmart plays an important role in the health of customers across the country.”

She joins Walmart as it and several other corporate giants, including Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., are exploring ways to make health care more accessible, less expensive and of higher quality.

Walmart, for instance, has more than 4,500 pharmacies across the country, nearly 3,000 vision centers offering eye care and optometry services, and a growing number of walk-in health care clinics.

It reportedly is looking to expand its consumer offerings with an online pharmacy, plus a telehealth network for calling health care providers rather than making in-person visits.

In another innovation, Walmart created and is expanding its use of medical Centers of Excellence, such as the Mayo Clinic, for its 1.1 million employees and family members on the company medical plan. Walmart has determined that these centers offer higher quality health care, and it pays the travel and other costs to send its people to these centers when special treatment is needed.

For example, the centers found that more than 50% of 2,300 Walmart associates who had been diagnosed as needing spine surgery really didn't need it.

Overall, patients treated at the centers have shorter hospital stays, lower readmission rates and return to work sooner, Walmart has reported.