It’s a well-known fact in the medical industry that retail clinics are popping up everywhere. Outside of health plans and the restrictions of a physician-led practice, retail clinics are streamlined and highly accessible to local patients. While many health plans consider retail clinics as competition, they don’t have to be. Why compete with retail clinics when you can join forces to provide superior medical coverage for health plan members and local non-member patients alike?
If your health plan or medical practice has been looking for new ways to serve patients and advance in the modern medical industry, partnering with retail clinics is a great expansion decision. Here are six beneficial reasons why a partnership would be good for your plan or practice.
Cover Provider Gaps
Every health plan has provider gaps. Members join, but there aren’t always physicians, specialists, or clinics available near their homes. Retail clinics have specialized in bringing ground-level medical care to patients in every town and shopping center.
By partnering with a retail clinic, you can provide more medical services to your members that they can reach and use. Retail clinics provide a medical office and medical professionals who can help your patients when your network cannot.
Provide Local Care Facilities
Your health plan can also gain the benefit of scattered local facilities. Retail clinics can help patients get medical care without driving for hours for specialists, clinics, or tests. A retail clinic has finite capabilities, but those cover most of what patients need from everyday medical care. Retail clinics can provide basic diagnosis, some medical tests, and prescriptions. They can also host visiting physicians and specialists, allowing you to expand your local network of rotating medical services to far-flung patients.
Secure Medical Oversight
Patients are going to stop by retail clinics. Many choose the convenience of a retail clinic even when they belong to a health plan. One of the greatest benefits of partnering with a retail clinic is maintaining unified care for each patient. When one of your patients visits a local retail clinic, the recommended care and regular physicians will be available and have access to any care provided by the retail clinic.
This can help manage their outpatient care and keep all involved medical professionals informed each time a patient gets a consultation or treatment.
Insurance Compatibility
Insurance has always been a challenge for the medical community. Both patients and providers struggle to get all treatments approved by insurance that appear to be covered in plans. Medical providers want to help patients navigate insurance coverage and treatment options, and alliances help.
By partnering with a retail clinic, you can guide patients to the local clinics that will definitely accept their insurance for available services. This can really help patients seeking local and continuous care.
Expand the Retail Clinic’s Referral Network
Retail clinics are also contributing to the networking tradition of the medical industry. If you can’t treat: refer. This is how retail clinics can serve so many local patients quickly. Retail clinics employ a combination of physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. Together, they focus on providing ground-level family medicine through diagnosis and treatment of everyday conditions.
For anything beyond the ability of the clinic to treat, retail clinics help patients by referring them to nearby doctors and facilities that can help. You can add your entire health network of providers to a retail clinic’s referral options, improving care for patients and potentially winning new health plan members through local referrals.
Create Flexible Care Options
Finally, consider the options you’ll be able to provide to patients. For any examination, test, or procedure done in a retail clinic, patients don’t have to travel for on-plan care. The services and medical professionals provided by a retail clinic become part of your health plan’s network. Patients are happiest when they can choose the best provider close-to-home so that health care doesn’t become the center point of their lives.
Between retail clinic locations and at-home medical visits, you can ensure that your health plan patients are well cared for, even if your best medical facilities are far from the patient’s home.
