During the healthcare reform debate of a decade ago, urgent care and other innovative patient access ideas, like the retail clinics seen in many chain grocery and pharmacies today, were promoted as a cost-effective alternative to primary care at a time when the nation’s medical schools were graduating fewer and fewer primary care physicians. The combination of fewer primary care physicians and the lack of health insurance was driving a very costly trend in the U.S.—the use of emergency departments for primary care.
Urgent Care Centers’ Prescribing Practices Raise Risk of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections
