Study: Retail health clinics may cost more in long run

AMELIA Pires, family nurse practitioner, assists Filipe Covacha of Cumberland at the CVS Pharmacy MinuteClinic on Cass Avenue in Woonsocket, / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
AMELIA Pires, family nurse practitioner, assists Filipe Covacha of Cumberland at the CVS Pharmacy MinuteClinic on Cass Avenue in Woonsocket, / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

While retail health care clinics have been viewed by policy makers and insurers as a way to decrease health care spending by replacing expensive emergency department or physician office visits, the clinics may actually increase spending if they create a demand for more services, typically an extra $14 annually.
A study, published in the March edition of the journal Health Affairs, examined people who visited retail clinics for low-severity illnesses such as urinary tract infections and sinusitis.
Researchers found that in most cases, people would have stayed home and not sought medical care if the retail clinic had not been available. The clinics are convenient due to their location and hours of operation, the study said.
The study found that some people did decrease their spending by visiting retail clinics instead of costlier physician offices. But the study said the savings were overshadowed by increased spending on new medical care.
“These findings suggest retail clinics do not trim medical spending, but instead may drive it up modestly because they encourage people to use more medical services,” senior author Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School and an adjunct researcher at the RAND Corp., said in a statement. “Retail clinics do offer benefits such as easier access to medical care, but the widely expected cost savings may not be realized.”
The study examined insurance claims from Aetna for 2010 to 2012 to track utilization and spending for 11 low-acuity conditions, finding that 58 percent of the 519,542 retail clinic visits for low-acuity conditions represented new utilization and that retail clinic use was associated with a modest increase in spending, of $14 per person per year.
The study compared the spending patterns of those who used a retail clinic with 861,557 other Aetna members who did not during the same time period. Retail clinics in pharmacies, grocery stores and big-box retailers such as Target Corp. and Wal-Mart were looked at by the researchers.

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  1. Did the article also say/include what the effects of better health were on patients/possible patients? These can be both monetary and pain-related improvements. Just looking at monetary benefits, since that seems to, unfortunately, be the main focus here, I would bet that the better health of users of retail medicine would save money; that is, say in fewer sick days.