Welcome to Wal-Mart, the doctor’s over there behind the snack bar

Via the Daily Eudemon: Wal-Mart to open 400 in-store clinics.
I am not crazy about Wal-Mart, but this could be a really good idea, particularly if the clinics are open extended hours. One of the factors driving up health care costs is the high number of patients going to emergency rooms for matters that are urgent but not life-threatening: ear infections, bladder infections, stuff like that. They do this because they can’t afford to take off work to visit the doctor or because they can’t get in to see the doctor at all.
I ran into this the other day. My husband’s out of town on business, so it’s just me and Hambet this week. I’d had the flu last weekend and had thought I was on the mend, but then I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with severe pain in my left ear.
I called my doctor early the next morning. (By that time I was having difficulty hearing and my right ear was starting to fill up as well.) It was 7:10 and I had to leave soon to drop Hambet off at school and then go to work.
Well, the office told me I couldn’t be seen until 2:30. “But all I need is someone to look in my ear….” “Sorry, can’t see you until 2:30.” Problem was, 2:30 was when I needed to be leaving to pick Hambet up at school. And even if I’d managed to find someone who could pick him up for me, that meant that I probably wouldn’t be able to start antibiotics until 3:30 at the very earliest. With my eardrums feeling like they were about to pop, I really wanted to be seen sooner than that.
So I said no thanks and decided to go to an urgent care center — a “doc in the box” type place. But after I dropped off Hambet, I reconsidered. “Doc in the box” wouldn’t open for another hour — and was half an hour’s drive in the wrong direction. The emergency room was five minutes away. So I decided to try the E.R.
I was optimistic when I walked in — the waiting room was empty — but right after I signed in the paramedics brought in three vomiting old ladies. I ended up waiting almost three hours before I was seen, but I was still able to start the antibiotics that much earlier. As I was being discharged, I remarked to the nurse that I felt silly coming to the E.R. for a mere ear infection, but the urgent care center was so far away, and so on…. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said. “They would have sent you here anyway.”
And for all my impatience, I had the luxury of taking half a day off work to try to get seen right away. I was also doing better than when I had an ear infection a couple of years ago. My doctor couldn’t see me for two days, I didn’t want to mess with the E.R., my ear was killing me, and I ended up doing the Bad Thing and mooching a leftover bottle of unexpired amoxicillin from a friend.
That was before I’d found out about Minute Clinics. When we were living in Maryland, a couple of pharmacies near us had opened “Minute Clinics” — drop-in clinics with extended hours (and fixed prices) for treating limited conditions (ear infections, sore throats, etc.) We’d gone there for flu shots before and that would have been a good option in this situation. But alas, no Minute Clinics in Virginia as yet. I wonder if Wal-Mart clinics would be along the same line.