This letter suggests that these clinics harken back to the days of medicine before HMOs:
Before managed care, health care remained settled within the community: The patient was dispensed medication by the town chemist whose apothecary was at most a few doors down from the office of the local physician.Since managed care, the patient has had to traverse the self-interested arrangements and managements of organizations that concentrate power so as to largely remove the patient, and physician, from freedom of choice over health-care-related decisions.
Yet during that transformation and into the 21st century, the demands of the patient remain the same as they ever were. At no time in history, regardless of circumstances, have patients wanted anything more than the assurance that their medical needs are well-protected by a trusted relationship. That is, they have always wanted access to services at prices that both they and their health-care provider could agree is just. This appears to be the function of the retail health clinics.
Related posts:
- Retail health clinics and the free market
- Are retail clinics living up to expectations?
- Retail clinics are not for patients with chronic disease
- Should primary care doctors embrace retail clinics?
- The AMA takes on retail clinics
- Retail clinics
- Why doctors need to embrace retail clinics
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“Retail Health Clinic”
Sounds like a euphemism for my GP’s office when I was a kid in the 60’s. He charged cash up front, first come first served, and sold little boxes of the most common drugs in his office.
The other docs thought he was “dodgy” but we loved him. We never could see the logic of having to make and appointment when we only went to the doctor when we were sick.
I had to get my record when I went to med school. My entire record of 21 years of multiple URI’s, bronchitis, flu, a couple of UTI’s, vaccinations, and half a dozen sets of sutures, was on a 5 by 8 index card–and everything we needed to know was there.
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