Health Care at WalMart

I ran across an article on the CNN Money site this morning about health clinics at Wal Mart. Here in Canada we have a nationalized health care system that does not allow any kind of a third party in the market instead of using doctors offices but now more and more doctors are opeing up storefronts that allow people to go to the clinic and it just works as a doctors office that allows walk in patients.

This has become crucial to delivering health care in Alberta anyway, as the emergency rooms in hospitals have not been able to keep up and many people are forced to wait 10 hours or more just to get treated.

I have not had much opportunity to go to the hospital emergency room as we usually take our kids to one of these clinics or else our family doctor. Anyway her are some of the points that are being made in the CNN article.

Americans, frustrated by endless waits at the doctor’s office, are sidestepping their family physician and taking their rashes, strep throat and pink eye to stores such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens instead.

As this trend gains more traction, experts say it could define the market for primary care.

“In many ways these retail clinics are a response to a broken health care system,” said Jonathan Weiner, professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“Not everyone has good access to primary care. We’re also dealing with a shortage of primary care doctors in this country,” he said.

Public health experts say retail clinics can, to some extent, fill the gap. But there’s one caveat.

“I suspect these store clinics will be around for a long time, but they won’t take over everything that a doctor can do,” said Dr. Sherry Glied, chairwoman of the Mailman School Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s School of Public Health.

What are your experiences in Canada or in the US with emergency type health care where you can see a doctor or go to some kind of a clinic? Are you being treated well? Are the doctors in these facilites asking the right questions? Are drugs being pushed quicker to try and get you out of the clinic or office?

I for one find that my family doctors with all of the info and relationship about our family history can definitly give us better service but things have worked out well for us in the past at these clinics as well.

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Tags: Alberta, Canada, chairwoman, CNN, Columbia, Columbia University's School of Public Health, family physician, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Jonathan Weiner, professor of health policy, professor of health policy and management, retail clinics, Sherry Glied, United States, Wal-Mart

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