Check Up Before You Check Out: Retail Clinics and Emergency Room Use

Diane Alexander, Janet Currie and Molly Schnell

No WP-2017-11, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Abstract: Retail clinics are an innovation that has the potential to improve competition in health care markets. We use the universe of emergency room (ER) visits in New Jersey from 2006-2014 to examine the impact of retail clinics on ER usage. We find significant effects of retail clinics on ER visits for both minor and preventable conditions; Residents residing close to an open clinic are 4.1-12.3 percent less likely to use an ER for these conditions. Our estimates suggest annual cost savings from reduced ER usage of over $70 million if retail clinics were made readily available across New Jersey.

Keywords: Clinics; hospital emergency services; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2017-09-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Check up before you check out: Retail clinics and emergency room use (2019)
Working Paper: Check Up Before You Check Out: Retail Clinics and Emergency Room Use (2017)
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