Issue 30 | Winter 2017

Dear Reader,

Few industry professionals outside of the healthcare space, experience fast, dynamic and ever-changing innovation. This is an even greater truth for the retail healthcare clinic industry, which, despite humble beginnings in the early 2000s, now has more than 2,300 clinics that spread across 43 states.  The industry employs thousands of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and has served millions of people to ensure that healthcare is accessible and affordable to everyone.  

The Social Innovations Journal is excited to have joined forces with the Convenient Care Association (CCA) as it celebrates its 10-year anniversary to launch our 30th edition of the Journal, titled Innovations through Retail and Consumer-Driven Healthcare: A look at the Success of the Retail Clinic Movement from the Beginning, Where the Industry is Today, and Where it is Innovating in its Mission to bring Accessible, Affordable, Quality Care to Everyone. We have partnered with the CCA and the retail clinic industry because it is both an example of how a social innovation transformed an industry, and because it continues to challenge itself and healthcare providers across the nation with a simple mission to ensure access and convenient, quality healthcare services for all people.

This edition provides an in-depth look at the retail-based convenient care clinic phenomenon and what Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen famously coined as one of the most “disruptive innovations” in healthcare. For more than a decade, retail clinic operators have dedicated themselves to ensuring that all Americans have accessible, affordable, high-quality healthcare. According to a MarketWatch¹  report, some 65 million Americans live in what’s essentially a primary care desert. The retail clinic healthcare industry is leading the nation in ensuring that these 65 million Americans plus Americans who need healthcare in non-traditional hours can get the care they need, when they need it. The retail healthcare industry exists because they know the consequences to our children, families and elders when healthcare is not accessible.  

The Social Innovations Journal is excited to document one of our nation’s most “disruptive innovations” and discuss how innovation in the social sector can improve many lives as well as change an entire industry to become an even better version of itself. This edition documents the inception and history of the retail clinic movement with a specific reflection that innovation is continual, and the retail clinic movement continues to evolve and revolutionize, ensuring more Americans can access healthcare in a timely and affordable fashion while also providing models for how the entire healthcare system can continually innovate and further improve on itself as an industry.

Very truly yours,

Nicholas Torres, Co-Founder
Tine Hansen-Turton, Co-Founder

¹http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/practices/primary-care-deserts-leave-patients-without-physicians