Looking for affordable health care with proven quality, minimal wait times and high patient satisfaction? Maybe you should head to the store. Retail clinics—small exam rooms in stores like CVS, Rite Aid, Target and Wal-Mart—provide low-cost care that is equal to or better than that received in physicians’ offices, urgent care centers and emergency rooms, according to a care comparison study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study by the nonprofit Rand Corp. found that even though the care was comparable, the costs of care in retail clinics were 30 percent to 40 percent lower than in physicians’ offices and urgent care centers and 80 percent lower than in emergency rooms.

Staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants who diagnose and treat routine ailments like sore throat, sinus infection and ear infection, retail clinics have grown in popularity since the first one opened in 2000. But some doctors’ groups, including the American Medical Association, question whether the clinics provide adequate care. They have warned that retail clinics may prescribe more antibiotics because many clinics are run by stores that profit from drug sales. But the study, published Sept. 1, found no significant difference in the number of prescriptions written by clinics, doctors’ offices or emergency rooms.

“These clinics are filling a niche of really convenient care,” says Ateev Mehrotra, M.D., the study’s lead author and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Many people have trouble getting a doctor’s appointment and often have to carve out hours to see a physician due to wait times at doctors’ offices. Retail clinics, on the other hand, he says, offer “walk in, no appointment, easy” access to professional medical care for many routine illnesses and are open evenings and weekends. Mehrotra is also a researcher at the Rand Corporation.

Walk in and say “ah”

He and his fellow researchers examined 700 cases each of three common illnesses—sore throat, ear infection and urinary tract infection—treated at retail clinic locations in Minnesota, and compared each of those cases with cases of the same illness treated in doctor’s offices, emergency rooms and urgent care centers. The study looked at costs of visits, performance judged by 14 quality measures—such as whether sore throat patients got rapid strep tests—and whether patients received seven preventive-care services—such as cholesterol testing and high blood pressure tests—at the initial visit or during the next three months.

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