Two thousand Retail Health Clinics Provided Walk-In Health Services Mostly in Metropolitan Areas
March 28, 2023 | Census.gov | America Counts Stories | Authors: Written by Alice Zawacki, Joey Marshall, Donald Cherry, Xianghua Yin and Brian W. Ward | Alice Zawacki is a senior economist and Joey Marshall is a data scientist in the Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies. Donald Cherry and Xianghua Yin are health statisticians, and Brian W. Ward is branch chief of the National Center for Health Statistics’ Division of Health Care Statistics.
Highlights From the Article by the Authors Above include:
- GRAPHIC BY REGION DETAILING Locations …
- There were about 2,000 retail health clinics (RHCs) in the United States between 2018 and 2020 that provided convenient health services inside pharmacies, grocery stores and supercenter retailers but most were in metropolitan areas, according to a new database created by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
- Retailers with clinics are of particular interest to the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics because they given their walk-in settings that provide convenient health care services for minor illnesses and injuries at times physician offices are closed or do not have appointments available.
- Methodology on Creating a Linked Database of U.S. Retail Health Clinics (RHCs) — details how the RHC locations were identified.
- Planned data linkages in the next phase will measure the 2010-2020 availability of RHC locations near households with young children who commonly require convenient heath care services. These unique data linkages will support research on RHC locations in underserved, low income and uninsured communities. LiRHC may also improve understanding of how RHC availability relates to the visits to nearby physicians and hospitals.
- NCHS’s National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) provides national data on visits to physician offices but currently does not collect health care data from RHCs in the United States. This collaboration between NCHS and the Census Bureau may help NAMCS include data from RHCs in the future.
SOURCE: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/03/retail-health-clinics-near-you.html
