I am often asked “how is it that you can charge so little?”  Sometimes I respond, “..better to ask why the big hospitals charge so much.”  There is no better way to see where your money is going in health care than to read this little article.  In today’s “The Oklahoman,” Oklahoma’s largest newspaper Jaclyn Cosgrove, senior health writer quotes Pat Patton, Chief Operating Officer of Mercy Clinic in Oklahoma, who responds to the closing of Mercy clinics inside of area Walmart stores.  Patton says:

“We have Mercy clinics on about every block, it seems like, in Edmond and northwest Oklahoma City, and our convenient care clinics are pretty strategically located, even prior to the Walmart clinics, and the services we provide there seem to provide patients a little more depth,” Patton said. 

That Mercy has clinics on about every block is interesting.  That they are concentrating their clinic presence in the most affluent parts of the Oklahoma City metro area is also interesting, I think. Or maybe just “strategic.” The lengths to which they will go to not make a profit!

G. Keith Smith, M.D.