Do Retail Health Clinics Complement Or Compete With Primary Care Physicians?

This is the same question that has been faced by many hospitals looking to start up an urgent care center. The primary care physicians usually express outrage that the hospital would compete with them. I have seen this first hand when our hospital contemplated such a move. Never mind that the hours of our center were in the evening and weekends when physician offices were closed. Also never mind that at 5pm the physician's phones shut off and patients got an answering machine that said they were unavailable and that any serious condition should be seen in the hospital's emergency room. I guess that EDs don't present the threat that urgent care centers do.

Well now there is a school of thought that supports the idea that these centers do not actually compete with primary care physicians, but actually help them. Although there may be some patients who use urgent care centers or retail clinics when available that otherwise would have gone to the primary care physician, many more are referred into primary care physicians for followup after an urgent care visit. Also the mix of patients in the clinic is different. Only 40% of these patients even have a private physician compared to 80% in the general population. Finally, because of the hours of operation, many of these patients would be going to an ED as an alternative, not waiting for the physician's office to reopen.

Overall these clinics and urgent care centers are seen as cheap, convenient and providing a high level of patient satisfaction. Maybe the physicians should not be so threatened and view them as a potential referral source that gives patients a great after hours alternative.

More on this later.

Mark Brodeur