Content about Convenient care clinic

Shifting patients away from hospital emergency rooms and into retail-based and urgent care walk-in clinics can significantly lower healthcare costs, improve access to care and reduce the impact of such chronic diseases as diabetes and hyperlipidemia, two health benefits experts asserted in a recent online presentation.

WASHINGTON — Most Americans who reported getting a flu shot in the past season received that vaccination in their physician's office. However, about 20% received their flu shot at a retail pharmacy and 12.6% at a walk-in clinic, according to an Ipsos Public Affairs poll released Friday. That suggests that as many as 18.5 million flu shots were administered to adults at retail pharmacy and another 11.7 million to adults at walk-in clinics. 

A recent survey found a significant increase in the number of U.S. adults who have visited a retail clinic in recent years. The growth is attributed to a rise in the number of clinics nationwide, as well as patients’ positive response to the convenience and lower cost of such clinic locations.

Who needs the services of community pharmacists and the nurse practitioners who staff retail-based walk-in clinics and ambulatory care centers? Among others, the nearly 67 million Americans underserved by primary care physicians.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT — The message is getting louder and gaining traction: Nurse practitioners are highly skilled health care professionals who need to be able to practice to the full scope of their ability, especially in light of the primary care shortage that is plaguing the nation.

(THE NEWS: Survey: Health insurers show advances in NP credentialing, reimbursement. Click here for the full story.)

New, holistic models for integrated, patient-centered care are emerging from the fog of health reform almost as fast as you can say “accountable care organization.” But pharmacy and retail clinic operators aren’t waiting for ACOs to fully ripen; they’re forging new alliances with hospital-based health systems and building the kind of continuity-of-care networks that could be a template for the new era of evidence-based medicine and improved patient outcomes.


On pace to reach about 1,000 clinic locations by 2016 and a robust team of 1,800 nurse practitioners and physician assistants working tirelessly to provide patients convenient access to quality care, MinuteClinic has demonstrated the integral role that it plays not only within CVS Caremark’s healthcare offering but within the entire U.S. healthcare system.


WOONSOCKET, R.I. — CVS Caremark’s MinuteClinic has opened three walk-in clinics inside CVS/pharmacy stores in the Cincinnati and Dayton metropolitan areas.

Three more clinics, two in the Cincinnati area and one in Dayton, are expected to open over the next four months with additional locations in both markets anticipated in 2013.

MinuteClinic launched its first retail medical clinics in Ohio in 2006 and now has 33 walk-in clinics inside select CVS/pharmacy stores in the Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton markets.

TAMPA, Fla. — The retail health clinic and urgent care center market currently is worth about $10 billion and is poised for strong growth in the coming years as the shortage of primary care physicians and crowded emergency rooms increasingly move patients to retail sites, according to new data by Marketdata Enterprises, an independent market research publisher.

Call it the Year of the Retail Clinic. 


As the Drug Store News Group and its partners at the Convenient Care Association played host to several hundred in-store based providers in Orlando, Fla., in late July for the fifth annual Retail Clinician Education Congress, several signs began to emerge that the retail clinic model had reached a critical tipping point. Not the least of which is that for the third year in a row, the U.S. Senate had resolved to name the week of Aug. 6 National Convenient Care Week.


NEW YORK — Retail-based health clinics are attracting more older patients and delivering more preventive care, particularly flu shots and other vaccinations, according to a new study from the Rand Corp.

Researchers found that visits to retail medical clinics increased four-fold from 2007 to 2009, with the proportion of patients older than 65 years old growing from 8% to 19% of all visits during this period.