Trends In Retail Medicine

Sg2's Bill Woodson on trends in retail medicine: (free registration required)

"The very crowded and diverse market that is Chicago seems likely to embrace many models of primary care including retail clinics, urgent care centers, home monitoring programs, e-visits, the "medical home," concierge practices, federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), and the corporate clinic.

"Indeed, 5 years from now we will look back and note that this moment in health care was marked not by the "retail clinic" but by the aggregation and disaggregation of different value streams. In short, we are starting to adopt different models of channel management that have marked the evolution of every other part of our economy. What in the world does that mean? It means that we are finding opportunities to stick things together and pull things apart in ways that add value for different types of customers. The retail clinic, the e-consult, the cancer nurse navigator—and bundled payment, for that matter—are all part of the same Erector Set of health care 2.0 that we desperately need to chase cost, waste and substandard care out of our bloated system. And yes, finding the right set of incentives for our overworked primary care physicians is a big part of the solution."

I'd add another forecast to Woodson's: health systems will turn retail clinics into "customer service centers" offering a suite of convenient, consumer-friendly services; centralized scheduling, registration and insurance verification, pre-admission testing, health information and physician referrals, all offered by a team of employees heavily incentivized to establish new patient/customer relationships. It wouldn't take much - a desk or two, maybe, and the right attitudes.

It's sort of the WaMu approach to retail health care...only without the fraudulent lending practices.