Old Rant: AMA/Minute Clinics

American Medical News

Dear Sir;

Your editorial of November 7, 2005, Clinic Past Aisle Nine (Who’s minding the store?  Indeed!), sounded suspiciously similar to the editorials I read when Urgent Care Clinics first started.  In fact, with every new attempt by someone to see patients (pharmacists, new specialties, OTs, PTs, surgery centers, whatever), there seems to be a gut reflex by the AMA to avoid any change in the status quo – apparently in a futile attempt to avoid redistribution of patients (and money).

Twenty years later, urgent cares and express cares are now acceptable forms of medical care delivery.  In fact, for the uninsured, under-insured, and insured who can’t see their assigned physician for a week or two, they are the only reasonably priced health care providers around.

I don’t like it that Wal-Mart thinks it can deliver health care cheaper, more efficiently, and make a profit doing it, any more than you do.  I dislike the fact that entrepreneurs (both medical doctors and non-physicians) think more about making a buck and how to wheedle the last dollar out of a patient than serve his needs.

In general, I think, health care in the U.S. serves no one but those entrepreneurs.  The federal government and the patients can’t afford it.  The insurance companies do little but collect premiums and make certain that their deductibles cover the costs of their contracts.  Physicians frequently worry more about reimbursement and the right codes than the care of the patient.  Pharmaceutical companies are without conscience, to pay their stockholders and CEOs.  Lawyers think of the medical care system as nothing but a cash cow.  Patients are also greedy wanting something for nothing, and demanding exorbitantly expensive tests and treatments unnecessarily – just in case.  No one is immune from blame.   

Until this system is fixed or until it is bankrupt, you will see more and more entrepreneurs do their level best to suck the life blood from it.  In nature, parasites usually know better than to kill their hosts.  They are smarter than most hospitals, lawyers, insurance companies, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, medical entrepreneurs, and medical organizations like the AMA.