Monday, May 14, 20073
Retail health clinics and the free market
Grace-Marie Turner suggests that the expansion of retail clinics is simply free market at work:
Much like the response to Hurricane Katrina, private companies are far ahead of the government in answering Americans' needs, this time for more accessible and more affordable health care. Political leaders across the country seeking to expand government's role in health care should take note . . .
. . . With many congressional leaders hostile to free-market solutions, these policy changes are unlikely in the next two years. But as consumers get a taste of what consumer-friendly health care is like, they may well demand that the top-down, centralized health-care delivery of the 20th century give way to a system more in tune with the demands of 21st-century consumers seeking greater value and efficiency.
Comments
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Anonymous
Every one of these will need a stack of business cards for local internists and family doctors who can see anyone with anything more than a hangnail. Anything serious or chronic and anything related to a chronic disease will be turfed. These clinics are all about drawing retail business, not getting clinic business. Once a patient has been there and been referred for outside care, they are still likely to return with their prescriptions, and while there do other shopping.
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Happyman
This will lead to a FLOOD of demand for a handful of drugs like azithromycin, augmentin, rocephin, and cipro. These are the drugs that fit best into the "one size fits all" paradigm that NPs and PAs like.
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Anonymous
Package pricing already exists. At many leading medical centers around the country, there are offices whose purpose it is to provide package pricing for cash-paying patients who are usually coming from somewhere outside the USA. Generally there is a package price for all care including all surgery and postoperative hospital stay and followup. A well-known polyclinic in a lakeside US city does this for cardiac surgery.
Post a Comment »Doctors in the community shouldn't be concerned. This isn't likely to take anything from their plates.
9:35 AM
Once a transcript of the visit is faxed to an unwitting pcp physician the clinics will absolve themselves of any responsibility towards quality of care of patient well-being.
As Dr. Grace-Marie Turner says "Package pricing for more complex surgeries, like knee replacement surgery, may not be far behind" - IS SHE NUTS??? Hopefully most see knee replacement as different from buying a tv set.
2:11 PM
11:05 PM