Catching up with my email last night just having returned from vacation was last week's edition of
AAFP News Now , a newsletter put out by the American Academy of Family Physicians. In it was another story in the ongoing turf battle between the
AAFP and retail clinics over who can see the most mucous and phlegm.
What a sad commentary this trend is for primary care and the health care system in general. These clinics, and much of urgent care for that matter, fill a void for people who just can't wait to get in to see their primary care provider assuming they have one. (Whether or not people should be more patient in general and plan ahead for things like camp physicals is certainly a legitimate point for debate.) This trend should be viewed as further evidence that the capacity to provide effective and timely primary care is simply not there in the health care system. Once more, a recent article in the
Annals of Family Medicine demonstrated that people would prefer to see a trusted doctor than to go to one of these walk-in clinics.
In a functional health care system there are few urgent care clinics and retail clinics are just not necessary. Perhaps when we see these shutting down, we'll know that we're headed in the right direction.
The Country Doctor
What a sad commentary this trend is for primary care and the health care system in general. These clinics, and much of urgent care for that matter, fill a void for people who just can't wait to get in to see their primary care provider assuming they have one. (Whether or not people should be more patient in general and plan ahead for things like camp physicals is certainly a legitimate point for debate.) This trend should be viewed as further evidence that the capacity to provide effective and timely primary care is simply not there in the health care system. Once more, a recent article in the Annals of Family Medicine demonstrated that people would prefer to see a trusted doctor than to go to one of these walk-in clinics.
In a functional health care system there are few urgent care clinics and retail clinics are just not necessary. Perhaps when we see these shutting down, we'll know that we're headed in the right direction.
The Country Doctor