Retail Clinics: Health Care, Leveraged

Only one installment in his promised series has been published so far, but we’re already enjoying Sean Deale’s Retail Clinics: Retailers Leveraging In-Store Services (Sean Deale, In-Store Trends: Where Retailers Begin Store Innovation, RetailNet Group, 4/11/12)

Installment #1 is a concise summary of where retail clinics stand today, as one could expect, but we liked this observation concerning a concern frequently expressed about retail clinic firms’ rollout strategy:

Of 982 clinics located in 32 US states in 2010, only 12.5% were located in medically under-served areas. (According to report by RAND Health Research, 2010). Simply stated, this means that retailers believe that the convenience and low-cost nature of the service will drive traffic to the store even when there are primary care practitioners close-by.

Most responses to the Ateev Mehrotra-led RAND study he cites expressed dismay that retail clinics were not sited to serve currently underserved US populations. While those criticisms have some merit, we know of none who simultaneously recognized Sean’s point – that clinics attract patients even in the presence of available conventional primary care. Mehrotra’s research supports this assertion and goes further to note that the retail clinics do not seem to cannibalize conventional primary care clinicians’ practices. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2012 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Clinics and location-based services, Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, Health care venues, Opinion/commentary/analysis, Retail clinics, Walk-in clinics. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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