title: Walk-in clinics versus physician offices and emergency rooms for urgent care and chronic disease management.
abstract: Walk-in clinics are growing in popularity around the world as a substitute for traditional medical care delivered in physician offices and emergency rooms, but their clinical efficacy is unclear.
  
  
  
  To assess the quality of care and patient satisfaction of walk-in clinics compared to that of traditional physician offices and emergency rooms for people who present with basic medical complaints for either acute or chronic issues.
  
  
  
  We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, six other databases, and two trials registers on 22 March 2016 together with reference checking, citation searching, and contact with study authors to identify additional studies. We applied no restrictions on language, publication type, or publication year.
  
  
  
  Study design: randomized trials, non-randomized trials, and controlled before-after studies.
  
  
  
  standalone physical clinics not requiring advance appointments or registration, that provided basic medical care without expectation of follow-up. Comparisons: traditional primary care practices or emergency rooms.
  
  
  
  We used standard methodological procedures expected by Cochrane and the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) Group.
  
  
  
  The literature search identified 6587 citations, of which we considered 65 to be potentially relevant. We reviewed the abstracts of all 65 potentially relevant studies and retrieved the full texts of 12 articles thought to fit our study criteria. However, following independent author assessment of the full texts, we excluded all 12 articles.
  
  
  
  Controlled trial evidence about the mortality, morbidity, quality of care, and patient satisfaction of walk-in clinics is currently not available.
authors.affiliation: Stanford Health Care, San Francisco, CA, USA, 94102.
authors.forename: Connie E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston MA, USA, 02114.
authors.forename: Christopher T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, 180A Longwood Avenue, Boston MA, USA, 02115.
authors.forename: Ateev
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mehrotra
mesh_terms: D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000592:standards*; D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities / Q000592:standards*; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000628:therapy*; D019468:Disease Management; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D010824:Physicians' Offices / Q000592:standards*; D011787:Quality of Health Care