MinuteClinics to Ruin Retail Pharmacy Business

With the wake of the pharmaceutical industry, national chain pharmacies such as Walgreen's, CVS, Rite Aid, Kroger's, Giant Eagles, Marc's etc... have held ruthless competition for your business. In the struggle to become number one countless of new ideas have emerged, and the newest idea to come into effect is MinuteClinics.

MinuteClinic is a business first introduced into the medical market in 1999 by Rick Krieger from Minneapolis. Rick took his son to the emergency room for a simple strep test, which takes only five minutes, and ended up waiting for two hours. He decided to open up something quicker, and thus MinuteClinic was born. After a few years of financial success with MinuteClinic, many of the national chain pharmacies began to adopt the idea.

In essence, a MinuteClinic will be a location in the chain pharmacy where a person who thinks they have pink eye or strep throat can go to for a quick checkout by a certified nurse practitioner hired by the pharmacy. If diagnosed the Nurse will fax the doctor who will fax a prescription to the pharmacy of choice, most likely the one the person is at. No appointment is necessary for the MinuteClinic. The Clinics will also be covered by most health insurances and will cost between $28-110.

Other services that are offered by the MinuteClinic include bronchitis checking, pregnancy testing, and vaccinations, skin conditions - such as ringworm and athlete's foot, and many more. Check out MinuteClinic for more information.

At first glance this sounds like a great idea, but to the trained professional or anyone that has ever taken a microbiology course in college, this is a nightmare. Imagine a person with pink eye entering the pharmacy to go to the MinuteClinic to get checked out. Once diagnosed and waiting for the nurse to fax the doctor and the fax to come back to the pharmacy, the diagnosed individual browses around the store while waiting for their prescription. The infected individual, while browsing the merchandise is transferring infection to the objects he touches. Healthy individuals shopping at the store can now become infected just by touching the infected objects. In a worse case scenario, a throat infection that causes the person to cough can be transmitted in the air.

The elderly are especially in danger. Their dependency on drugs makes them the majority of pharmacy patients, and with their weakened immune systems makes them the most susceptible.

MinuteClinic will begin to transform the pharmacy into a large hospital gift shop. Hospitals are notorious for transferring infection and diseases. Diseases transferred to patients while in the hospital are called Nosocomial infections. Nosocomial infections occur to about 10% of hospitalized patients, or in other words two million Americans per year. Additional statistics on nosocomial infections can be seen at Nosocomial Infections.

Although the MinuteClinics are a great idea, it is still a relatively new idea and certain precautions should be considered for MinuteClinic patients; it will be up to the pharmacies to create and enforce the new precautions in order to keep their customers safe.