Boston Mayor Tom Menino has made no secret of his vehement distaste for convenient care clinics and their tendency to profit from the sick and wary. And while whomever is in line to next helm The Hub, Marty Walsh or John Connolly may share similar inclinations, there’s no arguing the monetary cost of Boston’s lack of access to care for minor illnesses and conditions: $6 billion over 10 years.
The Pioneer Institute, dedicated to public policy research, has recently published data that’s hard the next occupant of Menino’s City Hall office of 20 years to ignore. Aside from the additional cash-money that could line the pockets of Boston for the next decade, research has found that “Nationally, the number of convenient care clinics increased by more than 600 percent from 2006 to 2012,” excluding Boston.
In 2008, Menino told the Boston Globe“Limited service medical clinics run by merchants in for-profits corporations will seriously compromise quality of care and hygiene. Allowing retailers to make money off sick people is wrong.” For example, MinuteClinic which serves 650 locations across 25 states, was acquired by CVS in 2006. And while that sentiment may be true to an extent, the information also outlines the potential benefits of clinics and calls upon Boston’s next mayor to take a dramatically different stance on the issue.
We reached out to State Representative Marty Walsh’s campaign to hear his views on the matter but have yet to hear back.
The Institute mentions multiple avenues in which clinics could put more money back in the piggy banks of residents and that of the state, despite the negative stigma Menino has willingly attached to them. As you’ll see in the infographic below, “The average cost of an outpatient emergency room visit in Massachusetts is $474 and an illness visit to a primary care physician averages $150, but the cost per visit for one chain of the commonwealth’s convenient care clinics is $84.”
Similarly, clinics in the Boston area would lessen the strain placed on federal subsidies; thirty percent of Boston residents are on Medicaid, 14 percent of Medicaid residents statewide. With greater access to the likes of flu shots and other minor prevention methods, Medicaid would be exploited less and become more effective to those who need it while residents would be more willing to put money down for a cheaper remedy that goes directly to the state than tightening their belt for hospital care which often supersedes their needs.
