Friday, February 03, 2006
Penicillin and potatoes
I just read a very interesting article. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11148598/
Appearantly, medical clinics are opening in grocery stores and Walmarts (boo! hiss!). So, in some towns, you can stop in to pick up some groceries and have that nagging sore throat checked out at the same time. I'm not exactly sure if this is a good thing or not.
According to this article, these clinics are staffed with PAs and nurses (and assumingly NPs). They are meant to deal with "minor" illnesses. But what do they do if someone comes in with what he assumes in a minor problem, and it turns out to be a major one? It also appears that these clinics will work from sets of standing orders. While standing orders are okay in some circumstances, do we really want to reduce healthcare to a list of checkboxes on a form? Healthcare is not a one size fits all thing. Every patient should have his/her entire health situation considered during an examination. That is a little difficult to do when the background noise is the beep of cash registers.
While I support the idea of community based healthcare, and making healthcare more accessible, I'm not sure that Sam's Choice/Big K/ healthcare is the best way to do it.
Appearantly, medical clinics are opening in grocery stores and Walmarts (boo! hiss!). So, in some towns, you can stop in to pick up some groceries and have that nagging sore throat checked out at the same time. I'm not exactly sure if this is a good thing or not.
According to this article, these clinics are staffed with PAs and nurses (and assumingly NPs). They are meant to deal with "minor" illnesses. But what do they do if someone comes in with what he assumes in a minor problem, and it turns out to be a major one? It also appears that these clinics will work from sets of standing orders. While standing orders are okay in some circumstances, do we really want to reduce healthcare to a list of checkboxes on a form? Healthcare is not a one size fits all thing. Every patient should have his/her entire health situation considered during an examination. That is a little difficult to do when the background noise is the beep of cash registers.
While I support the idea of community based healthcare, and making healthcare more accessible, I'm not sure that Sam's Choice/Big K/
