Is AMA Suggestion of Conflict of Interest by Retail Health Clinics a Veiled Attack on Low-Cost Medical Alternatives?

This week, the nation's largest physicians group, the American Medical Association (AMA) demanded that retail health clinics should be investigated based on the statement that the clinics help drive store traffic. Traditional physicians believe that retail clinics interfere with the traditional practice of medicine and disrupts the standard physician-patient relationship.

But the retail clinics are delivering services the healthcare-consuming public has been demanding for far too long - accessible, affordable medical care. Since it is expected there will be more than 1,000 retail clinics added before year's end, traditional physicians perhaps are feeling competitively challenged in new ways. With more transparent pricing readily available at retail clinics, people in need of basic medical procedures are more willing than ever to spend their own money in return for greater visibility into how much the transaction will cost in the end.

The concept of retail medical clinics is an easy answer to the vexing problem of how to make healthcare more accessible and affordable, but traditional physicians believe retail clinics put patients health and safety at risk in return for a profit motive than can cloud the impartiality of their advice. But for the people using these clinics, it would seem that receiving healthcare driven by profitability is better than no healthcare at all.

There are very few ways to compete against a trend with such significant disruptive potential for a mature, comfortable market so bereft of competitive dynamics to drive innovation. And, the easiest way to extinguish a force generated by organic market demand is to stamp it out before the public catches wind of it, which is perhaps why California physicians are beginning to step outside of traditional business practices by posting their prices for basic services in hopes that value is added by being treated by a traditional physician.

Of course, eye doctors moved out to the shopping mall years ago, and one of the largest employers of optometrists in the nation today is Wal-Mart. Maybe a trend like that will light a fire under the medical establishment to develop a business model that furnishes medical care that's good enough to patients who need basic access at a price they can afford.