HCFO Researcher Quoted in Article on Retail Clinics

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As retail clinics grow in number, they are also expanding the services they offer, going beyond urgent care toward population health and chronic disease management services. As Jeff Lagasse discusses in Healthcare Finance, some hospitals and health systems have looked to partner with retail clinics while others have opted to compete with them directly, opening up their own clinics. Former HCFO grantee Ateev Mehrotra, M.D., Harvard Medical School, notes that many of the systems going into direct competition have struggled to find their footing. He adds, however, that so far retail clinics have not been a threat to hospital finances because of the high demand for primary care. He references findings from his HCFO-funded study that about two-thirds of visits to retail clinics are new utilization, and only one-third are patients who otherwise would have gone to their doctor’s office.