Seeing a doctor at your local CVS?

Well you won't find a doctor, actually. Instead you'll find a nurse practitioner, who provide much of the same care as physicians and prescribe medicine in 44 states, according to the Wikipedia entry on NPs.

This post isn't about NPs, however. It's about "quick clinics," the nascent healthcare setting that has been increasingly present in drugstores. In June 2005, the AP article "Big demand for medical care in a jiffy" highlighted the trend. What makes these quick clinics so appealing?

Basically, it's that MinuteClinic, RediClinic & others make "health care a little more convenient and affordable for everyone,” according to the CEO of MinuteClinics. "The average MinuteClinic visit does not require an appointment and costs the patient less than $50." (According to a 27 April 2006 article in the Baltimore Sun, that cost is typically $59.)

At the quick-service clinics, nurse practitioners diagnose and treat strep throat, pink eye, bronchitis and other common ailments. Howe and other MinuteClinic executives say their business is to health care what ATMs are to banks — making ordinary transactions easier while freeing up traditional providers for more complicated cases.

The cost savings of quick clinics have been recognized: major insurers like Blue Shield and UnitedHealth and some employers are already encouraging their clients and employees to visit quick clinics for basic care using incentives like lower insurance co-payments than they'd pay for visits to the doctor.

According to the Baltimore Sun article, Black & Decker set the co-payment for visits to quick clinics at $15 compared with $25 for physician visits, "which is much more costly to [the company]." And interestingly, the Baltimore article quotes "85 percent of visits to [MinuteClinics] are now paid by insurers or other third parties."

And the revenues that these clinics can generate has also been discovered, convincing Wal-Mart to rent space for quick clinics inside their stores. This actually kills two birds with one stones, providing low-cost care to customers as well as employees.

As expected, doctors' groups are unhappy about this new threat to their monopoly power over healthcare and people being seen in places other than clinics and hospitals, where more complicated medical conditions are best diagnosed, treated & managed.

But "Mai Pham, a senior researcher at the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change, said the clinics could provide a better alternative for patients who might otherwise go to an emergency room for care or skip it altogether. 'It’s clearly meeting a market need, but there’s also concerns about why it is there is such a need,' Pham said."

And MinuteClinics' CEO adds that quick clinics "limit their work to common illnesses and are quick to send patients to emergency rooms or back to their primary doctors if other symptoms turn up." They also run tests and give immunization shots. "The clinics also pass records on to patients’ doctors and help those who do not have a physician find one."

In summary then, my take is quick clinics appeal to people because they're 1. cheap, 2. fast, 3. upfront about prices, 4. conveniently found in places they can shop, 5. the wait is shorter and 6. is a less-hassle option to get basic healthcare.

And quick clinics make business sense because 1. there are millions of uninsured or partially insured Americans who want healthcare, 2. millions shop at stores like Walgreens and Wal-Marts everyday, 3. the basic care they provide has lower overhead costs than a full-fledged MD-run clinic and 4. NPs provide high-quality primary care at a lesser cost than MDs.