Retail Clinics are Making an Impact on Population Health

In a recent interview with Health IT Analytics, Peter Goldbach, MD, chief medical officer of RediClinic and Health Dialog, discussed how retail clinics can potentially impact population health management.

Population health refers to the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes. Retail clinics offer increased availability of high-quality care and access to services such as immunizations. Since care is convenient and affordable, more people are getting immunizations, thus positively impacting population health.

“Retail clinics make good health care more accessible as well as affordable for a broad group of Americans, which means people get the care they need a return to health faster,” Dr. Goldbach said. “Perhaps more importantly, people are getting the care they need in the right setting. That means problems like strep throat don’t find their way to the ER, and this cost avoidance is good for patients and our health care system at large.”

Goldbach stated that he is looking to future integration of retail clinics with other health management services, such as patient-centered medical homes. However, he feels that affordability and accessibility of retail clinics will make the greatest strides with accountable care organizations (ACOs). Said Dr. Goldbach, “The way I think it’ll play out is that ACOs will embrace retail as the right solution for them. It’ll allow them a larger primary care footprint [and] it’ll allow them to deliver care more efficiently.”