Two decades ago, when the current quality improvement movement was new, a common diagram depicted a triad of key characteristics of a health care system—access, quality, and cost—accompanied by the then conventional wisdom that patients could have only 2 of the 3 at a time. Today, patients expect all 3. But are pediatric practices up to the task?
In this issue of JAMA Pediatrics, Garbutt and colleagues1 try to understand and reconcile parents’ use of highly accessible and low-cost retail-based clinics (RBCs) for their children with the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics that children’s care should occur in their medical home.