The American Medical Association is being lobbied hard by some members to take a strong stand against retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens, asking for a ban on their opening of in-store medical clinics. They are using the usual arguments that doctors aren't involved so how can quality care be provided to patients who use these clinics? And I love this argument: If the AMA does nothing, Hashemi said, "in five years, the chairs [at the AMA] meeting will be filled with representatives from Walgreens, Wal-Mart" and other retail outlets.
It's the old strategy: if they get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers [Thomas Pynchon's Proverbs for Paranoids].
How about - why not figure how to make these clinics work even better and more efficiently in order to help make primary health care more accessible and affordable (and timely) for people living in poverty or are do not have health insurance? And why continue to support the current model of primary health care delivery anyway without comparative trials of alternative models to improve community access to services and their impacts on health status? Other models seem to be working.
Here's an earlier post I did on business models for social marketing programs where franchising approaches to health were looked at.
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