Another Pharmacy Chain Shaking the Primary Care Tree and Guess What?
The Wall Street Journal’s article in the paper version is titled CVS Seeks Primary Care Doctors and it caught our eye. The corporatization of healthcare, now through pharmacy chains, is quite amazing. We mentioned it in this blog post recently. That was about Walgreens buying VillageMD for $5.2 billion and their plans to have at least 600 primary-care clinics in more than 30 U.S. markets by 2025 and 1,000 by 2027.
Here is what CVS now says:
On Wednesday, CVS Chief Executive Karen Lynch said the company is working with “speed and urgency” to create physician-staffed primary-care practices, which she said will be a priority for CVS as it considers potential acquisitions in the coming year.
Good for them. We guess they have a family doctor farm somewhere and are growing these doctors?
“We really believe that we need to kind of push into primary care, so we can influence the overall cost of care,” she said. “And by doing that, we think that we can have better engagement, help customers better navigate and obviously have higher quality, lower cost of care.”
So CVS as well as Walgreens, UnitedHealthcare and Humana all want primary care doctors. Here’s the thing that they ALL know. Residency slots for doctors have not increased. Add to the this that the interest to become a primary care doctor continues to wane (Something you will never hear, “I want to graduate residency and work for a pharmacy chain!”).
We question whether they really want doctors at all. Nothing that the CEO said is appealing to doctors. It’s truly amazing, actually. Dale Carnegie would shake his head at her. What happened to trying to arouse an eager want in a person? Doctors don’t care about the goals of CVS, Walgreens or even a major hospital network. What’s in it for them?
But what if they don’t care what doctors want? What if it is a big show? They can say they tried but no doctors came. So they just had to hire LELTs (NPs/PAs) to fill the spots and wouldn’t you know it, they get to pay them half the price.
Hmmmmm.
Sounds like they want to emulate the Earl Scheib and Midas Muffler model—dentists are doing this too…
I retired to get the “H” out last year as I was tired of taking call, doing hospital work, taking call and doing office work. Most primary care patients at least in a rural area are too stupid to take our advice about stopping smoking, cutting back on beer a bit (empty calories you know), losing cholesterol laden foods and losing weight. Yeah, I now know losing weight can be hard as I could stand to lose a few pounds myself. Am certainly not in the obese range but close.
Primary care is turning into an office only specialty due to the “electronification” (ie. EHR S#it) that sucks the life out of docs. I spent the majority of my career in the “paper/dictation age” and was very happy. Enter the computer and it sucks! No I was not computer illiterate as I too was enamored with the internet and built my own computers from scratch from parts I’d order off the internet in the 90’s. The clinic I worked for “transitioned” to EHR as the gubbermint said they would compensate them more. I saw the interface/software and said out loud to the instructor, “Oh s#!t this is going to “Effing” suck the big wazoo!” Administration was shocked because I talked about liberally building this computer or that computer as a hobby. They thought I was going to be onboard. I said this is a big mistake. I was adamant that the interface was going to hold us back, cut production and make life miserable for primary care. That has turned out to be true. I was the last of the breed who did it all (except OB). It was one impetus that encouraged me to retire at 64. That and the death of my spouse and having to take care of an adult mentally handicapped son who is actually doing quite well and is no problem.
Primary care has turned into a cesspool and I would strongly suggest that med students specialize than get caught up in this maelstrom. If already stuck in the storm, save one’s pennies as much as they can and get out/retire as soon as one can. You’ll be so much happier as I am now.
Will the CVS-owned docs be allowed to send scripts to other pharmacies if the patient so requests?
You forgot one step in there.
Offer crap to the primary care doctors.
The doctors refuse the crappy offer.
Then…..SCREAM “PHYSICIAN SHORTAGE” like the sky is falling.
Now that there is a national emergency because they can’t find doctors willing to be screwed, then hire NP’s and PA’s.
New Mexico allows pharmacists to prescribe b-coz they have the Prescribers Reference Manual. Just like driving a car-it’s all in the manual.
Sounds like conflict of interest to me. (Referring to Steve O’s comment)
So, next there will be an app so patients can (mis) Dx themselves from home, look up what the applicable medication is, write their own prescription (verified by an online “doc” like they do for men’s ED meds), and then have their meds shipped by mail through CVS or Walgreens. Sounds good to me. Business will be booming at the nearby York Casket Company. REAL MDs can just retire and play golf. Right ?