Millennials are trading primary care doctors for faster, cheaper alternatives

The Chicago Tribune reports:

the 83 million Americans born between 1981 and 1996, who constitute the nation's biggest generation. Their preferences - for convenience, fast service, connectivity and price transparency - are upending the time-honored model of office-based primary care.

Many young adults are turning to a fast-growing constellation of alternatives: retail clinics carved out of drugstores or big box retail outlets, free-standing urgent care centers that tout evening and weekend hours, and online telemedicine sites that offer virtual visits without having to leave home. Unlike doctors' offices, where charges are often opaque and disclosed only after services are rendered, many clinics and telemedicine sites post their prices.

A national poll of 1,200 randomly selected adults conducted in July by the Kaiser Family Foundation for this story found that 26 percent said they did not have a primary-care provider. There was a pronounced difference among age groups: 45 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds had no primary-care provider, compared with 28 percent of those 30 to 49, 18 percent of those 50 to 64 and 12 percent age 65 and older. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

A 2017 survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a Washington think tank, and Greenwald and Associates yielded similar results: 33 percent of millennials did not have a regular doctor, compared with 15 percent of those age 50 to 64.

Competition is a very good thing....