Retail clinic visits and receipt of primary care.

ABSTRACT:

Background

An increasing number of patients are visiting retail clinics for simple acute conditions. Physicians worry that visits to retail clinics will interfere with primary care relationships. No prior study has evaluated the impact of retail clinics on receipt of primary care.

Objective

To assess the association between retail clinic use and receipt of key primary care functions.

Design

We performed a retrospective cohort analysis using commercial insurance claims from 2007 to 2009.

Patients

We identified patients who had a visit for a simple acute condition in 2008, the "index visit". We divided these 127,358 patients into two cohorts according to the location of that index visit: primary care provider (PCP) versus retail clinic.

Main measures

We ev

SUBMITTER: Reid RO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3599015 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature