The guys behind the so-called retail clinics proclaimed that they would help the poor and uninsured get health care. They were going to be saviors. At least it sounded good and sometimes style is much more important than substance. It turns out that these retail clinics are following Sutton's Law and they found out that the money is in the more affluent neighborhoods.
By mapping the 930 retail clinics operating last year, the authors of a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine then crosschecked those operations with the U.S. Census data . Interestingly enough, only 123 clinics are located in areas defined by the federal government as medically underserved. This means those the areas which had less black and Hispanic residents and less
poverty were prime locations for retail clinics. This doesn't mean that blacks and Hispanics couldn't get their health care there but they just needed to drive, take a bus, hitchhike or walk to a nicer area of the state. Now, how about someone calling the backers of the retail clinics to task on this? Oh, wait a minute, I just did.
By mapping the 930 retail clinics operating last year, the authors of a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine then crosschecked those operations with the U.S. Census data . Interestingly enough, only 123 clinics are located in areas defined by the federal government as medically underserved. This means those the areas which had less black and Hispanic residents and less
poverty were prime locations for retail clinics. This doesn't mean that blacks and Hispanics couldn't get their health care there but they just needed to drive, take a bus, hitchhike or walk to a nicer area of the state. Now, how about someone calling the backers of the retail clinics to task on this? Oh, wait a minute, I just did.
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