Roadblocks are being set up as retail clinics spread. Is the AMA winning the fight?
Instead of a waiting room, MinuteClinics provide chairs for customers outside the exam rooms. They also don’t have their own bathrooms, so patients who need to provide urine samples must use the regular CVS bathroom. Older MinuteClinics didn’t include a hand-washing station for nurse practitioners — they used a hand sanitizer instead — but sinks were added at the behest of regulators. “Patients have never had a problem with the design of our clinics,” says Michael C. Howe, founder and chief executive of MinuteClinic.
Another issue is space. The current regulations in Massachusetts require that rooms where patients are treated include at least 80 square feet of floor space and an exam table. MinuteClinics have no exam table — patients are treated in chairs — and at most 54 square feet of floor space. In documents submitted to state health regulators, MinuteClinic argued that the space is sufficient for its “limited scope of services.” Regulations proposed yesterday by the state, and being considered by the Public Health Council, would allow the clinics to operate with as little as 50 square feet of floor space, no waiting room and no separate bathroom.
“You’re crowding people who may be sick, not to mention potentially exposing someone who’s just trying to buy Doritos,” says Bruce Auerbach, president-elect of the Massachusetts Medical Society and chief of emergency medicine at Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro, Mass.
