Hospitals Begin to Move Into Supermarkets

May 12th, 2009

Via: New York Times:

As walk-in clinics at stores like CVS and Wal-Mart offer convenient alternatives to doctors’ offices and hospital emergency rooms, some hospitals are fighting back — with walk-in clinics at some of those same retailers.

Around the country, hospitals are now affiliated with more than 25 Wal-Mart clinics. The Cleveland Clinic has lent its name and backup services to a string of CVS drugstore clinics in northeastern Ohio. And the Mayo Clinic is in the game, operating one Express Care clinic at a supermarket in Rochester, Minn., and a second one across town at a shopping mall.

Many primary-care doctors still denigrate the retail clinics as cheap, unworthy competitors. But hospitals see the clinics as a way to reach more patients and expand their business. And they argue that as President Obama and Congress warn of a shortage of primary-care physicians, the hospital-linked retail clinics are filling a vital public need.

The walk-in centers help clear hospital emergency rooms of people seeking only basic medical care, like antibiotics for strep throat. But in contrast to E.R.’s, which in many states cannot legally turn away those unable to pay, the retail clinics typically serve only patients with insurance or money.

And even if $77 throat cultures or $30 physicals do not represent a vast new source of profit for hospitals, retail clinics can play a marketing role, helping establish relationships with customers who may eventually need more lucrative in-hospital care.

Consumers who use the clinics are often “exactly the customers that hospitals want — women of child-bearing age,” said Margaret Laws, a policy expert at the California Health Care Foundation. “The hospitals want to deliver babies,” she said.

The idea of retail clinics took root about four years ago, and more than 1,000 are now operating around the country in drugstores, supermarkets and big-box discounters. But in the early going, few were linked to hospitals or medical centers. Now, though, about 1 in 10 has a hospital connection, according to Merchant Medicine News, an online newsletter for the clinic industry. And many more are planned.

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One Response to “Hospitals Begin to Move Into Supermarkets”

  1. Miraculix says:

    What else to call the phenom but “McMedicine”?

    What could be more clearly indicative of the true nature of allopathic medicine and the “business logic” at its very core?

    “Would you like to Super-Size your prescription, sir? For an additional cash premium we can issue you twice the number of blue pills than is covered by your insurance policy. Just sign here to waive the clinic of all liability…”

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