Doctors with Columbia's MedStar Health soon will provide urgent care services at area Rite Aid stores, through a partnership the organizations plan to announce today.
Starting this summer, MedStar PromptCare clinics will roll out in four drugstores, two in the Baltimore region and two in the Washington area. The companies hope to add 12 more programs nationwide after studying results of the pilot program.
"Health care has been late to having a consumer focus, and consumers are increasingly demanding service in a variety of settings that are much more convenient," said Eric R. Wagner, a senior vice president of managed care for MedStar, a nonprofit. "We're taking health care to a place where consumers already are."
Such convenience-care clinics have mushroomed since their modest beginnings in Minnesota in 2000. Today, more than 800 such clinics exist across the country in places such as Target and Walgreens, and that number is expected to nearly double by the end of the year, according to industry trade group Convenient Care Association, or CCA. Most are staffed by nurse practitioners, or physician's assistants, with doctor oversight because it is less expensive and there is a shortage of doctors.
"The shortage of certain family physicians is what's really driven this model," said Tine Hansen, CCA's executive director.
But MedStar's clinics will be doctor-run, a relative rarity, and therefore able to provide more specialized urgent care, in addition to treating sore throats and other minor ailments.
"It's meant to be an urgent-care situation, your alternative to an emergency department," said Dr. James A. D'Orta, chief executive of Consumer Health Services Inc. His company arranged, and plans to manage, the partnership.
"They're obviously not treating major issues - heart attacks or bleeding. They're treating your garden-variety acute care," he said. Think of it as "urgent care light."
D'Orta said prices will be lower at the clinics than in emergency rooms, and he plans to arrange contracts with most major insurance providers, including Medicare.
Doctors and medical groups have railed against the nurse-practitioner-clinic model, concerned about increased competition and quality-of-care issues. Last year, the American Medical Association asked for legislation to regulate such clinics.
Proponents of nurse-practitioner-run clinics say they provide accessible care for many of the population's minor - but prevalent - ailments and serve a purpose.
