We feel the tools for locating free clinics are better than almost all of those available for locating retail clinics, or urgent care clinics. But don’t take our word for it. Go ahead – you be the judge:
Here’s the locator provided by the National Association of Free Clinics (of course there is one).
Here’s the locator provided by the Convenient Care Association (we love CCA – their locator, not so much).
Here’s the locator provided by the Urgent Care Association of America.
No, we were not able to make Tom Charland’s January event. And it wasn’t because it was held in Minneapolis.
Really.
We wish we had been there. Tom is and has long been one of the industry’s strategy leaders, and from the summary reports emerging about the event, a very useful time was had by all. (Being equal opportunity non-conference attenders, we aren’t even at this week’s National Retail Clinics Summit in Philadelphia, and we like Philadelphia. We have no doubt that that event also will produce some interesting food for strategic thought, and we hope to glean some tidbits via teh trusty intertubes for you and ourselves).
But back to news of the ConvUrgentCare Symposium. We enjoyed this account, dated March 8 (free registration required) from American Medical News reporter Pamela Lewis Dolan. In it, she notes:
Attendees discussed theories about why the model wasn’t working as well as they’d hoped: the seasonality of the business, oversaturation and the difficulty attracting patients outside of those who shopped at the host stores….
…[A] retail clinic — normally a small operation staffed by a nurse practitioner — that is open 4,000 hours per year can break even with 8,000 patients [according to calculations shared with attendees by Mr. Charland]. Most primary care physicians would find that pace, two patients an hour, financially unsustainable….
The piece goes on to cite calculations based on existing clinic operators’ reported traffic volume to indicate that even the leaders have not yet achieved profitable levels of visitors. Operators are finding that, among many contributing factors, the challenges would-be patients face in simply finding clinic locations is prominent.
(Gee, where have we heard that before… 
)
So, basic barriers like host businesses’ prohibitions against outside signage for retail clinics obscures clinic availability: people don’t know they’re there, so they don’t go.
We suspect inability to find any nearby clinics, regardless of brand, via an easy-to-use, smartphone-friendly, web-based clinics locater also comes into play, except of course for those fortunate enough to have discovered healthcare311.com….
Sorry. We couldn’t help ourselves. We now resume your regularly scheduled commentary.
A possible contributing challenge the Dolan article does not mention as having been discussed is imbued in the Symposium’s very title. “ConvUrgent Care” (we like it, Tom!) signals an awareness of a different sort of “job to be done” for consumers by clinics in the attendees’ market space. (We’re fairly confident that job does not closely match the conception of CoxHealth’s David Taylor, whom the article quotes as saying “…we’re set up to feed the system” – meaning, presumably, CoxHealth’s hospital system.) Retail clinics need not necessarily be able to handle stitching patients up, or x-raying them, to succeed, but for the concept to succeed, the form factor may well need to be conceived as something broader than it is currently by both consumers and operators.
Was anyone from the Innosight Institute, the consultancy that is home to innovation authorities Clayton Christensen and Jason Hwang (both of The Innovator’s Prescription fame), in attendance in Minneapolis? Judging from the principals’ speaking schedule, it doesn’t look like it, but if either had been, we’re quite sure they would have been quick to suggest a revisiting of the “job to be done” by clinics for their target customers may be in order, to determine if the form factors now in use provide the best fit.