Who Uses Retail Clinics?
Among the findings: • Men and women seem to equally go to retail clinics. • 18- to 44-year-olds made twice as many visits to retails clinics (43% compared with 23%) as visits to their primary care physician. • The youngest and oldest patients are least likely to visit retail clinics and more likely to go to a doctor’s office or emergency room. • In 39% of visits, people who went to a retail clinic reported having a primary care physician. (That’s compared to 80% of people nationwide who say they have a personal doctor.) • 2.3% of visits to a retail clinic were triaged to an emergency room or a doctor’s office. “These clinics appear to attract patients who are not routine users of the current health care system,” Mehrotra says in a news release. “For these patients, the convenience offered by retail clinics may be more important than the continuity provided by a personal physician.
