Drive-Thru Urgent Care May Solve Parking Woes, but Will Patients Take It Seriously?

When the idea of drive-thru pharmacies came up in the 90s, pharmacists hated the idea, with many convinced that it diminished the image of their profession. Many likened patients driving up to receive their prescriptions to the fast-food industry. Now dedicated lanes of traffic and dispensing windows are a common sight. Could that work for urgent care, though? According to an article published by Atlanta Inno, we’re about to find out. Viral Solutions, an Atlanta company that says it found success in offering drive-thru testing services at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, plans to launch its first DriveThru Urgent Care location there in August. The aim, as cofounder Ron Sanders is quoted as saying in the piece, is for patient to “be seen, and ride off with your medications and be evaluated all within 10 minutes.” While there will be exam rooms accessible on site for patients who need more attention, and the company says it can even perform some x-rays without the patient leaving their car, they’re promoting the idea—using some distinctly specific examples—that this will be a very different kind of medical practice. Sanders says in the article that “we pattern our model after Chick-fil-A.” In the same article, his partner, Dr. Ben Lefkove, says, “We can kind of come to the car NASCAR-style and swarm it.” The result, they say, is “a lot of efficiencies.” Given the difficulty the retail pharmacy industry had in implementing drive-thru dispensing—which is now nearly ubiquitous—it will be interesting to see whether this idea takes hold.