Content about Urgent care

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — MinuteClinic and Cleveland Clinic Florida, a multispecialty academic medical center that is part of the Cleveland Clinic health system, have entered into a clinical affiliation to enhance the healthcare services they provide and offer patients greater access to care.

CLEVELAND — Wellness retailer Max-Wellness on Tuesday partnered with Lake Health, a private not-for-profit community healthcare provider in northeast Ohio, for a summer 2011 launch of its unique Mini-Max store concept.

SAN DIEGO — The nurse practitioner-staffed retail clinic concept has sparked a revolution in health care, and now even physicians are re-examining the model to find new ways to create value and improve healthcare delivery.
 

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. Up to 1-in-4 emergency room visits could take place at a retail-based health clinic or urgent care center, saving potentially $4.4 billion annually, according to new research published in the September issue of Health Affairs.

Furthermore, the research found that such retail clinics as Take Care Clinics have been shown to save patients $279 to $460 per visit compared with emergency room costs.

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. Take Care Health Systems has praised the designation of National Convenient Care Clinic Week by Sens. Dan Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Thad Cochran, R-Miss.

National Convenient Care Clinic Week plays out against the backdrop of the third annual Retail Clinician Education Congress, co-hosted by The Drug Store News Group/Retail Clinician magazine and the Convenient Care Association.

NEW YORK Doctors Express, a national urgent care franchise, is looking to become the largest for-profit urgent care franchise with up to 3,000 centers, according to published reports.

"One of the challenges [with health care] is the time it takes to get in to see your primary care physician," which can take up to a month, Doctors Express founder Peter Ross was quoted as saying in an article published on Coloradoan.com.

LANCASTER, Pa. Lancaster General Health, a regional healthcare system, recently opened two retail clinics at Walmart supercenters in Pennsylvania, with a third slated to open in June in a Giant food store.

The first retail location, known as Lancaster General Health WellCare Express, opened on April 26 at the Walmart Supercenter in Parkesburg. The second WellCare Express location opened on May 10 at the Walmart supercenter in Lancaster. On June 14, a third WellCare Express clinic will open in Giant Food in Lititz.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Solantic walk-in urgent care has launched a mobile phone Web site that can be accessed by any mobile phone device that has Web-browsing capability.

As the healthcare reform debate continues and discussions of public vs. private are tossed about, what seems to be getting lost in all of the muck are the cost-controlling levers that already exist, like those reforms CVS Caremark's Tom Ryan outlined.

For example, getting patients to take their medications as prescribed could have a major impact on driving down costs -- to the tune of billions of dollars a year -- while improving healthcare outcomes of patients.

“We’re already paying for it—it’s just hidden in your premiums.”

That’s what President Barack Obama told attendees of a town hall meeting last month in Green Bay, Wis., one of the stops on his traveling road show to sell his vision for healthcare reform to America.