How does the electronic medical record fit in?
We’re an add-on to someone’s normal medical care. So, it’s important for us to get medical records to the patient’s medical home. Out of the last half-million patient visits we sent out 320,000 records to physicians for patients who identified a medical home. Those 320,000 went to 18,000 different practices in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. We’ve got a major problem in dispersion of records. We don’t have one or two trading partners like some metro-based medical practice might have. We’ve got tens of thousands of people we need to get records to. That’s why we’re looking for strong, intermediary-type organizations that have the scale and scope to be able to exchange these medical records. There are a number of very exciting developments that are coming, and MinuteClinic is involved in pilots in two or three of those. I think we’re at the cusp of substantially more medical transactions on a national basis. There have been some regional initiatives and most of those have b
