Retail Clinician Survey

Back when I visited a retail clinic (i.e., MinuteClinic, RediClinic, TakeCare), I grabbed a copy of the Retail Clinician magazine that they had. Finally, I am getting to the bottom of that reading pile to browse through it. It had a survey of 150 nurse practitioners that work in the clinics which revealed the following:

• 57.2% of them work in clinics that are in chain drug stores
• 63.7% of them came from a physician’s office or hospital / ER
• 58.1% of them see more than 10 patients per day
• Their busiest days are Mondays and Saturdays
• 57.2% said that they write prescriptions for more than 70% of the patients they see
• 53% said that they give OTC recommendations to less than 40% of their patients
• 56.2% said that more than 40% of the patients they see don’t have a medical home (i.e., a primary care physician)
• 21.2% of them saw their challenge as health care claims adjudication and 24.6% of them saw their challenge as public awareness
• 79% said they would be receptive to handing out patient education materials
• 67% said they would be willing to hand out product samples
• 50% of them said that they consult the pharmacist 1-5 times per day for questions

I don’t have the data right now to compare this to physician’s practices, but it would be an interesting comparison in terms of percentage of times Rxs are written, etc. As I mentioned the first time I went to a clinic (I have been back since), I agree that this is a great avenue for information distribution. It is much less rushed than the physician’s office.