Retail Health Care Clinics: "A Model for the Future"
Never underestimate the power of the profit motive and competitive market forces to bring about real health care reform. The 1,200 retail health clinics across the country are providing high quality care at lower costs than emergency rooms or physician offices, and they offer better, faster service, with longer and more convenient hours than a traditional medical office (watch MSNBC video above).
While politicians sit around and have endless debates about how to bring down health care costs and expand access to medical care through various grandiose government interventions and programs, the private marketplace is already doing it - lowering costs and expanding access at more than 1,000 retail clinics. And unlike government-based health care reform, the explosion of affordable, convenient retail health clinics across the country didn't require any tax increases, government spending or funding, or special legislation.
Retail clinics truly could be the "model for the future" for health care reform. When it comes to lowering costs and improving quality and service, government enterprises have a miserable track record, and competitive markets have a proven, excellent record. Retail clinics are just one example of thousands of cases of how market competition results in bringing down costs and improving customer service.
6 Comments:
This is a good way to deal with small ailments like colds and earaches, and for cholesterol screenings, no doubt. Is this the "model of the future" for dealing with serious health issues like...?
Retail clinics represent triage in medical practices. For simple common issues they provide treatment freeing the more highly trained to handle the more difficult cases. Electronic medical records make this much simpler as whoever is looking at the patient will see everthing medical about the patient.
Of course the critical issue just like today with the primary care Dr. is to know when to refer.
The medical profession is concerned that a 1 in 10000 issue may be missed, but with standardized protocols this can be minimized and the issue exists today. For example if you have been in a tropical jungle and have a problem but don't tell the Dr. about the trip he may well rule out what is really wrong.
But note that this is not the free market rampant but just regulated to at a minimum ban fraud. Of course the medical profession does not like these clinics since it would harm their guild (in the medieval sense of a guild). An interesting question is a guild a free market or a monopolistic concept?
Now go convince Texas to allow them. How a state that passed one of the best tort reform laws in the country drags its heels on retail clinics is beyond me.
Well this is interesting about retail health clinics...
Personally I think this article would've had a lot more gravitas if someone other than the thoroughly whacked out Dr. Nancy Snyderman had been presenting it...
"How a state that passed one of the best tort reform laws in the country drags its heels on retail clinics is beyond me"...
Hey randian you might find the answer to your question here in this posting by the Texas Medical Association: 2007 Legislative Compendium: Retail Health Clinics
Hey randian you might find the answer to your question here in this posting by the Texas Medical Association: 2007 Legislative Compendium: Retail Health Clinics
Doctors getting in the way of affordable health care? That's a surprise.
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