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News
Conference Addresses Changes in Walk-in Medicine
November 4, 2011

Fourth Annual ConvUrgentCare Strategy Symposium to address four trends:
  • Convenience and timeliness at the top of the list for patients assessing their walk-in experience
  • Population health management as the new economic paradigm vs. fee for service
  • Employers at the center of healthcare provider strategies
  • Primary care provider shortages forcing new approaches to care

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Shipman and Klepper to Speak at January Symposium
October 6, 2011

Scott Shipman, MD, MPH, is an expert on the primary care workforce.  Brian Klepper PhD, will speak on the dilemma facing self-insured employers an their evolving revolt.

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Safeway Begins Building Clinics in its Stores
August 1, 2011

Traditional grocery gets a boost as a platform for retail clinics. 

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Publix Ends Retail Clinic Partnership
June 7, 2011

Publix told the interested parties the week of May 2 that it was ending the relationship after five years.

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Bowling Takes on New Role at Solantic
May 31, 2011

Michael Klein takes the helm at Florida’s largest urgent care network

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Rosenbluth to Retire from Walgreens
February 25, 2011

Hal Rosenbluth, co-founder of Take Care Health and president of Walgreens’ Health and Wellness Division, will leave the company in April.

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Humana Agrees to Buy Concentra
December 6, 2010

The largest urgent care/occupational health network in the country goes for $790 million in cash.

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Symposium Attendees to Receive AAFP CME Credits
December 6, 2010

The 2011 ConvUrgentCare Strategy Symposium, with a beginning date of January 24, 2011, has been reviewed and is acceptable for up to 15.25 Elective credits by the American Academy of Family Physicians.

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ConvUrgentCare® Strategy Symposium Set for Scottsdale
November 7, 2010
The third annual ConvUrgentCare® Strategy Symposium will be held January 24-26, 2011, at the Cottonwoods Resort in Scottsdale, AZ.  All registrants will receive a one-year subscription to The ConvUrgentCare® Report.
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Fast Care Opens in Wal-Mart
September 7, 2010
The two clinics operated by Portneuf Medical Center in the Blackfoot/Pocatello area are the first Fast Care clinics inside Wal-Mart stores.
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Two Operators Pull Out of Madison
September 7, 2010
Meriter Hospital operated two Fast Care clinics inside Shopko stores and Take Care Health operated three locations inside Walgreens stores. All have exited the market.
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MinuteClinic Forms New Hospital Partnership
August 4, 2010
MinuteClinic has entered its fourth hospital system partnership, this time with St. Vincent’s in the Southeast.
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Quick Health Changes Its Name
August 4, 2010
Quick Health, one of the early retail clinic operators in California who at one time had as many as 19 locations, has changed its name to Access Health.
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Target Clinic to Enter Two New Markets
June 3, 2010
Chicago and West Palm Beach clinics will open in September.
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HealthCore Releases Study on Urgent Care and Retail Clinics
June 3, 2010
Wellpoint’s research subsidiary compares costs to emergency rooms and recommends urgent care and retail clinics when the family doctor isn’t available.
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Memorial Health's MedPoint Express Pulls Out of Indianapolis
June 3, 2010
The system now operates three clinics in South Bend: two in Martin's and one in Wal-Mart.
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High-Deductible Health Plans Grow by 25%
June 3, 2010
The largest increase came from large group plans, which rose by 33 percent.
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CVS Marks 10th Anniversary of Retail Clinic Industry
June 3, 2010
QuickMedx, now MinuteClinic, opened its first clinic in May 2000.
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MinuteClinic Forms Third Hospital Partnership
May 3, 2010
MinuteClinic and Catholic Healthcare West have formed a partnership similar to the ones MinuteClinic formed with The Cleveland Clinic and Allina.
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Take Care Seeks JVs with Hospitals
May 3, 2010
In an interview in mid-April with Dow Jones, Take Care Health Systems CEO Peter Miller said his company is in “deep discussions” with several hospital systems.
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Insight
2011 Year in Review
January 6, 2012
Walk-In Medicine's Second Spring
If you had to choose one word to describe the past year in walk-in medicine, it might be “spring.”  In this 2011 Year in Review, we not only tell the numbers story, but we look at the top-10 events or trends we believe defined the walk-in medicine industry.
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Why Retail Clinics Matter
December 5, 2011
Get Ready for a New Round of Growth

If you have been in the camp that thinks retail clinics won’t last, it’s time to take another look at the landscape. We believe the retail clinic concept is about to enter a period of strong growth, driven by the model’s underlying efficiency at a time when services will seek the most logical care venue based on acuity. In this feature article, we discuss our “Top Five” reasons for optimism in the retail clinic channel.


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Disease Management Revisited
November 4, 2011
New Services More Common in a Walk-In World

Despite a number of disappointments with disease management firms in the last decade, so long as the incidence and cost of chronic disease remain high, new services will continue to emerge around care and prevention.  So it is no surprise that the concept is top of mind for retail clinic operators, drug store chains, health insurance carriers, health systems, urgent care operators, worksite clinics and fitness vendors.

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Urgent Care Becomes Strategic to Hospitals
October 6, 2011
Integration with Primary Care is Key

It seems like a natural fit to have a hospital system operating a network of urgent care centers, especially at a time when population management and accountable care organizations seem to be ruling strategic plans going forward.  Yet with all of this momentum around population management, integration with primary care and efforts to reduce emergency room visits, the number of hospitals operating urgent care centers is surprisingly low.  In this article we look at some hospital systems have have had great success with their urgent care initiatives.

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A New Paradigm for Walk-in Medicine
September 15, 2011
The 2012 ConvUrgentCare® Strategy Symposium

The ground is shifting in the world of walk-in medicine, and in some markets it is shifting quickly.  No longer can urgent care and retail clinics be viewed through the narrow lens of acute care.  Numerous announcements over the past few months are not just random events.  And this year’s ConvUrgentCare Strategy Symposium, January 23-25 at the Orlando Hilton, will attempt to show why there is a pattern emerging that includes walk-in clinics.

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Another Look at Grocery Stores as a Retail Clinic Platform
August 1, 2011

Are traditional grocery stores becoming an afterthought as a platform for retail clinics? Standalone drug stores dominate the retail clinic scene. And most of the recent growth has come through openings in big-box retailer Walmart. But don’t give up on grocery as a retail clinic platform just yet.

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Mid-Year Retail Clinic Assessement
July 1, 2011
A look at growth and importance of retail clinics

As we cross the mid-year point and assess what predictions we and others in the industry have made about walk-in medicine, we look at the numbers behind retail clinics and whether those clinics get a disproportionate amount of attention not only in the press but in health system board rooms.

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Urgent Care is Hot
June 7, 2011
But how long will private equity interest last?

Based on the buzz at last month’s urgent care conference, it is clear that most operators are glad they are on the urgent care side of walk-in medicine versus the retail clinic side.  Compare that to 2005 and 2006 when 200 retail clinics opened, representing a daunting new class of competition.  This article takes a look at the state of urgent care and offers some advice to those who wonder if now is the time to sell.




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Self-Insured Employers
May 6, 2011
The

As a result of continuing price pressure and the recent Affordable Care Act, how you work with employers, especially self-insured employers, should be one of the most important elements of your provider contracting strategy.  In this issue we make three fundamental observations, and include an interview with Helen Darling, president and CEO of the National Business Group on Health.

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More Threats to Walk-In Medicine
April 5, 2011
WhiteGlove is Like a Mobile Retail Clinic

Last month we described the growing momentum behind telemedicine and virtual visits.  This month we introduce another concept, called WhiteGlove House Call Health, that is the latest potential threat to walk-in medicine.  It is essentially a mobile retail clinic and more, providing both primary care and urgent care services, using nurse practitioners.

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Telemedicine Becomes a Virtual Reality
March 2, 2011
What will be the impact on retail and urgent care medicine?

When we wrote about telemedicine 18 months ago, the term was more commonly associated with making medical specialists available to people in rural communities.  But over the past couple of years three developments have caused telemedicine to take on new significance:  technology advancement, the entrance of major players with commercially viable offerings and health plan reimbursement.

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2011-2015 Annual Forecast
February 10, 2011

Publishing an annual forecast is always a risky proposition.  In any industry, what looks like a lasting trend today can change course over a 12-month period.  And that has been especially true for retail clinics. Based on the seemingly equal forces in favor of and against walk-in medicine, our forecast continues to be conservative compared to other more optimistic forecasts out there.

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Quidel
Click here to view Urgent Care clinic information
Retail Clinics in the United States
Total Retail Clinics:  1,360
Total Number of States:  40
Total Number of Operators:  115
Total Retailers:  40
Total Hospital Systems:  95
Bayer HealthCare Diabetes Division
Retail Clinic Growth

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