In our instant gratification culture, this is an inevitable trend. Fast-food style medicine. These so-called “Minute-clinics” are being placed in department stores for walk-in urgent-care visits, which also serves to drive traffic into these stores. I think the underlying problem of poor primary-care access is certainly contributing to the demand. People are growing tired of waiting several weeks for appointments, and endless hours in the emergency room. One solution is open-access, which does help somewhat, but certainly we need to do more to address the problem of physician, and specifically primary-care, access.
