Convenient, Affordable Retail Health Care Clinics
ABC-TV Eyewitness News in Los Angeles reports on how more and more retail health clinics are turning up, offering quick, affordable health care. Some clinics are open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with no appointment necessary.
"Paitents love the convenience of being able to come in, to walk in at any time and be treated instead of having to go to the emergency room and having to wait long hours," said Dr. Maggie Bertisch.
8 Comments:
I couldn't agree more with the minute clinic concept. As health care gets more expensive in tradition venues, these clinics will thrive. I started doing this years ago and now only go to a dedicated doctor's office for specialty care, like getting a ligament repair on my ankle last year.
Another great concept are these little minute gyms where you can go 24/7/365 all day, any day as long as you have a digital key. Great security, clean, inexpensive, simply and parking is always easy. It's a no frills place with no showers and fancy locker space. But I will never go back to the Ys again.
Hope you'll get featuring these minute waves-of-the-future.
Bets on how long before the Government bans them unless they run them?
The U.S. has the highest quality health care in the world. It produces "luxury goods" that even Americans can't afford. Perhaps, standards should be lowered for general practitioners to increase the quantity of MDs (the WHO, which rated U.S. health care below Cuba, although it ranked the U.S. #1 in two categories, i.e. capital and labor, e.g. hospitals, medical equipment, doctors, nurses, etc., stated there are fewer U.S. physicians per capita than in Europe). U.S. MDs tend to become specialists rather than general practitioners. Many foreigners cannot meet U.S. standards to practice medicine in the U.S.
The WHO healthcare rankings are worse than useless: they are outright lies. The WHO relies upon self-reporting from each nation. Does anyone believe that Cuba or China provide truthful data?
The WHO rankings also overemphasize "coverage" (where the US ranks very low since we have many uninsured people who have to pay at the time of service -- gasp!).
The reason we have fewer MDs per capita than Europe is that our mostly self-employed doctors work 60-80 hours per week while government-employed European doctors work 35 hours per week. This is another worthless comparison that the WHO uses to slam the US.
The WHO also ranks the US low for neonatal deaths because we have the strictest reporting standards of any country in the world. If a 30-week-gestational-age premie dies after a week in the NICU, we call that a neonatal death. Most of Europe calls that the equivalent of a stillbirth: they pretend the premature baby wasn't born alive.
I could go on, but I think the point is made that we should ignore WHO healthcare ratings.
Peak,
Photos from Cuba's hospitals tell a very different story. See here and here.
You can't believe everything you read.
Good job qt!
Anyone remember Michael Moore's movie Sicko?
Well thanks to a link from Gateway Pundit we have a link to this site Gentiuno with photos (site is in Spanish) showing us the medical paradise that Cuba is at least in Moore's estimation...
Large hospitals have priced themselves out of the industry through abusive billing, bureaucracy, and poor customer service. Many third world countries have this exact small clinic model, where you walk in, get seen, and pay for services, without an enormous layer of health care insurers getting a cut.
The convenience clinic is a great idea that has had a bit of rough past because of poor locations that were stand-alone. They are now some-what subsidized by large pharmacies that are often inside mega retailing establishments. The major draw-back is the lack of medical records to practice sound medicine. This is why we need to support and encourage national data bases of personal medical information. Microsoft, Google, Oracle and others are moving into this are with big investments because it so logically cuts down paper-work. The ability for the convenient clinic to access the patient's health records will help to greatly drive down costs which we desparately need for health care in the U.S..
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