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Demand for convenience puts clinics in stores

Retailers clear space for basic medical treatment to boost their own revenues.

By Robert Kazel, amednews staff. Sept. 13, 2004.

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Even as some medical practices devise open-scheduling systems to offer same-day appointments, large retail chain stores in several states are viewing patients who lack patience as a ripe new market.

The stores are leasing space to clinics that treat conditions such as sore throats, ear infections and the flu. The clinics are generally located next to the store pharmacy and staffed primarily by physician extenders. They entice sick shoppers with a primary drawing card: speed. Most patients are in and out in 15 minutes, and no appointments are needed or taken.

For example, Minneapolis-based MinuteClinic has opened about a dozen clinics staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants in Minnesota Cub Foods and Target stores over the past four years. They rely on physician-designed decision-making software to help diagnose minor ailments, or to decide whether a patient needs to see a physician elsewhere. A MinuteClinic-affiliated doctor is on call.

MinuteClinic once envisioned its locations as places on which uninsured people would rely for essential care on a cash-only basis. But now nine in 10 patients pay with insurance, said Linda Hall Whitman, PhD, the company's CEO. With that in mind, the company is launching what it hopes to be the start of a national expansion -- as many as 400 clinics in 20 metropolitan areas in the next three years -- by opening in eight Target stores in the Baltimore area.

The store-based clinics are responding to increasing numbers of patients who won't tolerate long waits for appointments or any delay in a waiting room, said Timothy Komoto, MD, past president of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians. "We, as a society, want the quick fix. We want it now. These facilities are filling that perceived need."