Six years ago, I wrote about the emergence of retail clinics as “…The Next New Thing” in the delivery of health care.  Even then, for almost 10 years these enterprises had been offering basic medical care in drug stores in nearly half the states in the country at about 12 percent of the cost of an emergency room visit and a third of the cost of a visit to an urgent care center.At the time, the California Health Care Foundation opined that, “If successful, this could change the way many people receive routine, non-urgent medical care, with significant implications for insurers and health care providers.” 

Prophetic indeed, as the convenience and ease of access to retail clinics have caused them to flourish and expand to almost every state in the nation.

But, “It’s not just sore throats and flu shots anymore,” as reported in Kaiser Health News (KHN) last week.  On April 4, “Walgreens…became the first retail store chain to expand its health care services to include diagnosing and treating patients for chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes and high cholesterol,” KHN noted.

Convenience, low cost and the severe physician shortage we face improve the odds for success of Walgreens’ plan, and I’m certain other retail clinic operators will follow suit.  I also predict that efforts by organized medicine to block their expansion, while formidable, will serve more to increase awareness of the need for access to this vital, low-cost consumer service.  Rather, the real challenge lies with the need to integrate these enterprises into organized systems of medical care. 

The new health care financing and delivery system paradigm calls for managing the health needs of consumers by coordinating their care from the helm of medical homes.  The proliferation and use of retail clinics for chronic disease care management is antithetical or counter-purposeful to that strategy, unless these clinics are embraced (i.e., annexed) by the integrated delivery systems emerging in response to the new paradigm.

Your thoughts?

NOTE: Healthcare WebSummit will present the webinar, “Retail Clinics: Healthcare Factor or Fad?” April 25. Learn more.