It Costs Me, It Costs Me Not

In Wednesday's papers (Sept. 10), I saw this headline on a Star Tribune story:

Retail clinics haven't cut health costs, study finds
A study of HealthPartners patients found that overall medical costs rose despite competition from MinuteClinics

Then in the same day's issue of the Pioneer Press I saw this:

Study: Retail clinics cost-effective
Researchers examine MinuteClinic, find health expenses held down

Wow. Were those two headlines written for stories about the same study? Yep.

Reading both stories reveals that Chen May Yee, writing for the Strib, focused on costs overall, and the finding that MinuteClinics have not had the competitive effect some would have expected. Costs at all providers went up substantially over the three years of MinuteClinic's existence. Yee quotes the study's author, who said "The data does not support the idea that MinuteClinic or other retail clinics has had any negative impact on rising health-care costs."

The PiPress's Jeremy Olson mentions this fact in one paragraph about two-thirds of the way through the story. He does not quote the researcher on this point. Instead, his lead tells us that patients "get their money's worth" at MinuteClinics. His story also included a glowing quote from MinuteClinic's CEO. In fact, I started to suspect that his story may have been largely based on a MinuteClinic press release, but I couldn't find such a release on the website, so I guess not.

Both stories reported that MinuteClnic patients paid an average of $51 less for treatment than those at urgent care and $55 less than those at a primary-care physician. The Strib's Yee also gave us two additional and important facts:

The additional amount patients paid for emergency room care ($279) -- a key number for people without health insurance to know when making a decision about where to turn for care.

The average amount paid by MinuteClinic patients ($104) -- useful to know to get a sense of scale of the various payments. A bar chart would have been even better to illustrate this:


Why weren't those two facts included in the PiPress story, even though it was 73% longer (22.5 inches vs. 13 inches for the Strib)?

Just another example of media weirdness, I guess.