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Comment by wahern | Hacker News Reader

CVS has already provided this for over 10 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinuteClinic

Because it fell off everybody's radar, I assume CVS MinuteClinic hasn't been as revolutionary as originally hoped. OTOH, if Walmart is joining the fray then either the retail clinic market has been steadily growing in general, or Walmart thinks they can do something different.

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I tried it once in 2007 and it was quite pointless. The person in charge at that location was I think a real MD but she appeared to be encumbered by hard policies that restrained her from pretty much doing anything. I regretted wasting time there since I had to go to a regular doctor anyways and haven't been back.

I've only ever used them for flu shots and a tetanus shot once. They're a perfect supplier of those kinds of services in my experience. I think if I were actually ill or something I'd try to bump up to the next tier and at least go to an urgent care if I can't get into my primary care physician.

Problem is MinuteClinic is just that, a clinic, it's just a nurse that can do "office treatments" such as vaccines, shots, prescribing blood tests, bandaging wounds, etc. But ultimately anything else has to be referred out.

Prescribing blood tests might already save doctors time. Most of the time when I'm sick the doctor just asks broad questions and takes a blood samples... and I'm told to come back tomorrow when the results are back from the lab.

Right, but that seems to be exactly what the parent comment wants.

Maybe it is different where I am but in my experience, it is always an MD on staff.

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