As presented in the HFMA article (Grube, Cohen & Clarin, 2014), healthcare is increasingly being altered by a retail presence. According to the authors, retail care is an approach that delivers healthcare to proactive consumers within the market-driven framework of other purchases. In a sense, consumers are now "shopping" for healthcare rather than "going to get" treatment or medical attention when needed. The paradigm shift this represents is that healthcare is increasingly weighed on a price/cost balance rather than being treated as an "emergency" or "forced" purchase.
The retail care environment is populated by single-service or limited service clinics, urgent care centers, walk-in laboratories, freestanding medical service centers (radiology, …show more content…
It serves no useful purpose to be a low-cost retail care center with no market strategy, operating from 9-to-5 with an "everybody is the same" mentality. Healthcare is personal care and low prices may get only one chance to create a good impression. However, prices do matter. Traditional providers charge hundreds of dollars more for procedures such as MRIs and colonoscopies (Grube, Cohen & Clarin, 2014, p. 56), and these cost structures are not just vulnerable to competition, they defeat the ideal purpose of the technologies themselves which is to help reduce the incidence of illness and health damage. But retail care prices should obey the dictates of proper healthcare first, supported by detailed insight of the market, and the overall cost structure to provide the selected …show more content…
The first positive is that it clearly defines retail care and its implications for healthcare providers. In a sense, many traditional providers were in the position of being something like a monopoly, relatively free from competition and under little pressure to adapt to what people wanted beyond serving their basic needs. The second positive is that it presents its implications with enough objective evidence to show that the case presented goes beyond opinion. To state such a fundamental change requires proof and the authors have presented enough to sustain their case. The third positive is that they moved beyond the significant observation to define how the new paradigm should be addressed. One could debate their factors as being more or less important than stated, or eliminate some possible redundancies, as in this essay. But by providing a framework to address the new environment, the article becomes a basis for action rather than simply an
The retail care environment is populated by single-service or limited service clinics, urgent care centers, walk-in laboratories, freestanding medical service centers (radiology, …show more content…
It serves no useful purpose to be a low-cost retail care center with no market strategy, operating from 9-to-5 with an "everybody is the same" mentality. Healthcare is personal care and low prices may get only one chance to create a good impression. However, prices do matter. Traditional providers charge hundreds of dollars more for procedures such as MRIs and colonoscopies (Grube, Cohen & Clarin, 2014, p. 56), and these cost structures are not just vulnerable to competition, they defeat the ideal purpose of the technologies themselves which is to help reduce the incidence of illness and health damage. But retail care prices should obey the dictates of proper healthcare first, supported by detailed insight of the market, and the overall cost structure to provide the selected …show more content…
The first positive is that it clearly defines retail care and its implications for healthcare providers. In a sense, many traditional providers were in the position of being something like a monopoly, relatively free from competition and under little pressure to adapt to what people wanted beyond serving their basic needs. The second positive is that it presents its implications with enough objective evidence to show that the case presented goes beyond opinion. To state such a fundamental change requires proof and the authors have presented enough to sustain their case. The third positive is that they moved beyond the significant observation to define how the new paradigm should be addressed. One could debate their factors as being more or less important than stated, or eliminate some possible redundancies, as in this essay. But by providing a framework to address the new environment, the article becomes a basis for action rather than simply an