A study shows that retail clinics generally draw patients without primary care physicians. That comes as no surprise, since many PCPs are not accepting new patients or booking out months:

“We don’t know whether these kinds of visits are going to disrupt primary care relationships,” he said. “The majority didn’t have a primary care physician so they didn’t have relationships to disrupt.”

Primary care offices that leave this demographic untapped do so at their own business peril.

If they can’t find ways to improve access, the segment of the population without primary care doctors will ensure that retail clinics will continue to grow.