The Role of the Retail Clinic – Michael Howe
October 15, 2007With a million visits a year and a satisfaction rate of 97% to 100%, those patients who experience MinuteClinic (www.minuteclinic.com) seem to love it. But in the world of retail clinics, does more convenient care mean better care? Michael Howe, the CEO of MinuteClinic, believes it does. I talked with Howe, a speaker at this year’s symposium, about his organization’s effort to transform the delivery of health care. Howe explained, “The broadest perspective to start with is redefining the word ‘integration’ in health care. Typically when we think about integration in health care we think about it from the standpoint of bringing all the solutions to a single point, and as long as the patient comes to that location providers can solve most, if not all, of their issues. MinuteClinic really looked at it the other way and asked how would you integrate high-quality, simple health care solutions into a consumer’s lifestyle. Our goal is to put access to health care professionals into the pathway of the consumer.”
With 200 clinics around the country and plans to double that, Howe is well on his way. Found in CVS stores, MinuteClinic’s team of board-certified practitioners are trained to diagnose, treat and write prescriptions for a variety of common family illnesses for patients 18 months and older. But it is not all about convenience for Howe. He points out that MinuteClinic spent a year and a half working with The Joint Commission to become fully accredited. And though they are the only retail provider at this point to be accredited, he thinks retail clinics should seek accreditation to really define themselves at the highest level of care.
By building a health care service based on best-practice protocols for focused conditions and through leveraging their electronic medical record (EMR) to measure their providers’ adherence to these guidelines, Howe believes that the retail clinic model delivers higher-quality care at a lower price that is more accessible and more convenient for patients than traditional primary care practices. During the symposium, Howe will share his vision of a truly integrated health care system and the retail clinic’s role within it.
To what extent do innovations in healthcare delivery need to be driven by the intent to profit from healthcare? Will this model be as effective in meeting the needs of the public for acute, routine, and preventive care if it were to be delivered by a nonprofit organization? Could it indeed go further by reinvesting the profits into delivering convenient and inexpensive healthcare to the under/uninsured population? Given its partnerships with large corporations (pharmacy and retail chains), could these services not be free? I know Mayo is exploring retail clinics – could these try out this model? I know Albert Lea Clinic, a member of the Mayo Health System is exploring a free healthcare card. Could this be a model? Can innovation finally deliver healthcare to the most in need?
We’ve been preaching the impact of consumer-oriented innovations like MinuteClinics at conferences across the country, and it’s amazing that we still hear a lot of “head in the sand” push back to the idea of mini-clinics. For example, we’ve had a primary care physician stand up and say, “If they’re going to MinuteClinic, they must not really be sick.” One of the greatest challenges to innovation in this industry is the long-rooted “inside-out” perspective: What can we do clinically, and how can we push it out to the market? MinuteClinic and other mini-clinics clearly took an “outside-in” approach, looking at what consumers want and working backward. As more new approaches to delivering care hit the market (such as Steve Case’s RevolutionHealth.com), traditional healthcare providers will be compelled to move more to the “outside-in” perspective.
not being a healthcare professional clearly i’m uniquely qualified to pontificate without a shred of evidence to back me up, so here goes….!
the dilemma Chris mentions above regarding primary care physicians and their “head in the sand” approach to retail clinics seems to me to be a transition issue rather than anything else. after all primary care physicians are a revered and respected institution in and of themselves – they are and have been the “big dogs” and often single source of medical expertise for millenia – that’s quite a culture to change. i imagine they believe they have a lot to lose in the face of these “yappy little upstart retail clinics”, and loss isn’t easy. So perhaps the way to turn the tide of opinion with the physicians is to focus time and energy on their transition for a while. it would seem this battle has multiple fronts, the Customer front is the obvious one but the Physicians front perhaps needs to be fought differently with tools of peace, listening and engaement as opposed to weapons of war.
there, uninformed pontification as promised
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