Patients Without Traditional Doctor Seek Out Retail Clinics
Posted on: Wednesday, 10 September 2008, 12:20 CDT
Patients who use health clinics in retail stores often tend to be people who don’t have a primary care doctor, researchers reported on Wednesday.
Several major drug and grocery stores like Walgreen Co, CVS Caremark and Wal-Mart Stores have begun to offer clinics to consumers where they can be treated for a variety of basic ailments.
These retail clinics are expected to grow from the current 1,000 outlets in the U.S. to 6,000 by 2011, researchers wrote in the journal Health Affairs.
The study found that 39 percent of patients at a retail clinic said they had a primary care physician, compared to 80 percent of people in a national sample who said they used a traditional doctor.
"One of the primary concerns that has been raised is that retail clinics will disrupt primary care relationships," said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra of University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a researcher at the nonprofit RAND Corp.
"What we found is for the majority of people who are going there, there is no primary care relationship to disrupt," he said. "These are people who are not being served right now."
His team analyzed data on more than 1.3 million visits to retail clinics from 2000 to 2007 to find that younger patients tend to use retail clinics, with people aged 18 to 44 accounting for 43 percent of clinic visits while that age group accounts for just 23 percent of primary care office visits.
"They were very much less likely than the general population to report having a primary care provider," Mehrotra said.
Almost 90 percent of the time, people came seeking treatment for upper respiratory, sinus and urinary tract infections, sore throats, bronchitis, immunizations, swimmers ear, conjunctivitis and routine diagnostic tests.
The same conditions accounted for 18 percent of visits to primary care physician offices and 12 percent of emergency department visits.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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