AMA's Retail Health Clinic Policy Emulates Academy's Guidelines

By News Staff
7/10/2006

The Academy's list of Desired Attributes of Retail Health Clinics became an integral part of newly adopted AMA policy on these facilities.

The new AMA policy, adopted during the June 10-14 annual meeting of the AMA House of Delegates, calls on retail health clinics to adhere to principles that largely mirror those set forth in the Academy's list of attributes, which was approved by the AAFP Board of Directors in March.

The AMA, like the Academy, calls for retail health clinics to

offer a well-defined and limited scope of practice,
follow protocols derived from evidence-based guidelines to ensure quality of care,
ensure supervision by a physician,
establish a formal connection with community physicians to ensure continuity of care and encourage use of medical homes, and
use electronic health records that can gather and communicate a patient's information with his or her medical home.

In addition, the AMA policy, based on a report developed by the AMA's Council on Medical Service, calls on clinics to inform patients, in advance, of the qualifications of the practitioners providing care and to establish appropriate sanitation and hygiene guidelines.

"Similar to the approach taken by the AAFP, the Council (on Medical Service) believes that it would be best to help facilitate how store-based health clinics operate in the market, in order to ensure that optimal care is provided to patients," says the report. (MS Word file: 8 pages / 84.5 KB. More about downloading files.)

Although retailers and insurers have several cost-saving and marketing incentives for supporting retail health centers, "The new AMA principles will help ensure these incentives do not override the basic obligation of store-based clinics to provide patients with quality care," said Rebecca Patchin, M.D., a member of the AMA Board of Trustees, in a June 13 news release about the new policy.

Printer-friendly version

Email this page