A recent study concludes that retail clinics provide quality care at lower costs and equal or better quality than other urgent care options.
“As Congress debates healthcare reform and looks for ways to better manage overall healthcare costs, retail clinics should be looked at as a way to help achieve that goal,” said Andrew J. Sussman, president and chief operating officer of MinuteClinic.
The study, by the Rand Corporation and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was based in part on data from Minneapolis-based MinuteClinic. It found that the quality of care at retail clinics is on par with doctors’ offices, urgent care centers and emergency rooms for certain services.
However, according to the study, the cost of treating acute illnesses at retail clinics is 30 percent to 40 percent lower than in physicians’ offices and urgent care centers, and 80 percent lower than at emergency departments.
Hospital officials see retail clinics as beneficial to their emergency departments, allowing the hospital ED to handle more urgent cases better. More than a third of the U.S. population has access to retail clinics.
“There are 42 retail clinic operators, and the majority are hospital chains or physician groups,” said Ateev Mehrotra, MD, co-author of the study. “Although, it’s not a huge fraction of the number of clinics.”
Sutter Health in California and the Mayo Clinic are two examples.
Sussman said MinuteClinic is to working to integrate with primary care physicians for patients with chronic conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension.
“For the uninsured, it is clearly a cost savings to go to retail clinics as opposed to an emergency room,” said Mehrotra.