Institute For The Future

The AMA and Retail Health Clinics

The old guard has spoken. At a meeting earlier this week in Chicago, the policymaking House of Delegates of the American Medical Association reacted to plans by retailers like Wal-Mart and CVS to bring thousands of retail health clinics to U.S. consumers in the coming years. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, the AMA group said that,

. . . lack of regulation at retail clinics raises concerns about liability, health risks and potential conflicts of interests between the clinics' nurse practitioners that order up prescriptions and the pharmacies that fill them.

The AMA has asked state and federal regulators to investigate whether these retail clinics represent a conflict of interest, because they are often located adjacent to in-store pharmacies.

 

The Tribune quotes Dr. Rodney Osborn, president of the Illinois State Medical Society, an AMA delegation among the most outspoken on scrutiny of retail clinics:

Our primary focus is patient safety and patient care and the retail clinics have a different mission of selling products and prescriptions. . . . We want these clinics to be accountable.

To state the obvious, perhaps the AMA just doesn't like the competition. These retail health clinics offer affordable access to basic health care by charging relatively low, fixed rates for common medical services like flu shots, strep throat checks, and ear infections.

 

Interestingly, the three largest operators of such clinics -- MinuteClinic, Take Care Health Systems, and RediClinic -- have already entered into a written agreement with the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)

. . . to limit the scope of services they offer, practice evidence-based medicine, establish formal connections with physician practices in the local community, set up referral systems and share medical records electronically

according to a March 2007 article in the AMA's own newsletter. As the president of AAFP is quoted as saying, "The market is going to tell us whether [retail clinics] succeed." According to a recent poll, there are 300 retail health clinics in the U.S. today with another 2,000 expected by the end of 2008.

 

If you look at our Global Health Economy Map of the Decade 2006-2016 (see link on left), you'll see that we highlighted "Retail Health" as a "hot spot." Expect more innovations to emerge as individuals embrace new models of health care delivery.