Well, I couldn't believe it when the medical director for Wal-mart showed up at our pediatric service meeting announcing they were a "gateway" to primary care.
Everyone at the meeting was basically debating with him about communication. But, now Wal-mart has access to all of their EMRs which all are Logician due to the hospital and federal grant money purchasing them. Interestingly, all of the other pediatricians, besides me, work on salary so they really don't care if Wal-mart sees their patients. This access is to the patient records at the practices. They apologized they couldn't connect to Amazing Charts. There is no way I am going to allow Wal-mart anywhere near my patient records.
I, of course, don't. So, I was rather upset and let it be known that this was a "gateway" out of our practice. I also told the medical director that we would dismiss any patient who used their facility during office hours.
By the way, they don't use E & M coding and CPT codes to charge patients. They just have what they call a "Menu Board" with a price list like you would see at a restaurant. Example:
Common cold $50
Sore throat $50
"Severe" sore throat $110
Pink eye $50
Ear wax removal $110
Sports physicals $50
Pneumonia vaccine $99 (I still don't know what a pneumonia vaccine is. Is that Prevnar? Pneumovax? You can get a Pertussis and Hib pneumonia -- is that a pneumonia shot?)
TB testing $20 (second visit free!) Just what I want. A person with possibly tuberculosis running up and down the aisles in the busiest retail store in the world.
Pregnancy test (urine) $15 So, what if a 15 yo turns up positive? Are they going to council them and send them to the maternity section?
HIV testing. Will they council positives there?
They provide and charge for ALL required school shots so children could get all of their immunizations there.
THIS HAS ME FURIOUS! First, they put all the mom and pop stores out of business. But, at least one could argue that was capitalism. Now, they are aiming at the private practitioner. And, of course, with healthcare reform, all we hear about is fixing primary care all the while allowing stores like Wal-mart, which have no business in medicine, to be licensed to practice medicine.
Not to mention the fact that they probably ePrescribe directly to their pharmacy, which must be some type of conflict of interest. I know that some providers on here do carry his or her own meds they sell, so I would like to hear from them.
