Want medical help without a long wait?

Do the following experiences sound familiar?

• My daughter waited four-and-a-half months to see a dermatologist for a skin rash.
• Scheduling a physical usually takes even longer.
• I bring piles of magazines when I need the services of an urgent care center, given their wait times.
• My child's pediatrician does see her the same day, for example, for a potential streptococcus throat infection. I lose a half-day of work for the physician visit, travel time, and a pharmacy stop.

Dean Health System, Group Health Cooperative and UW Health beware. A reinvention of primary care is coming to neighborhood Walgreen stores in the form of Take Care Health Systems, a wholly owned Walgreen's subsidiary.

In Chicago, 29 Walgreen stores offer same-day walk-up primary care services through registered Take Care Nurse Practitioners. Each nurse has advanced family medicine education and clinical training, and is licensed to diagnose a wide range of illnesses.

You'll pay your insurance co-pay ($59-$74 for cash payers) for the exam, a fraction of the total (employee and employer) cost for seeing a physician in our region. Take Care presently works with 41 insurance plans in Chicago.

Diagnose and prescribe

Uncertain if you have a cold or sinus infection? Take Care Nurse Practitioners not only diagnose which one, they are licensed to write prescriptions filled without delay in Walgreen's pharmacy.

Forgot to schedule your child's physical for sports or camp? $55 same-day service is Take Care's answer.

Bladder infection, skin rashes, pink eye, minor injuries and other health issues fill Take Care's long service listing for patients 18 months and older.

Take Care founder Hal Rosenbluth, who turned a $20 million travel agency into a $6 billion global industry leader, saw what many health-care systems are blind to: minor illnesses and procedures do not necessarily require physician-level care.

Disruptive innovation

This strategic insight led to a disruptive innovation of primary care.

Clayton Christensen first coined the term "disruptive innovation" to describe what Take Care is doing: offering a game-changing new industry product that brings new people into the market and encourages others to switch. Examples include:

• Toyota disrupted the luxury car market with Lexus.
• Crest White Strips became an affordable alternative to dental office teeth whitening.
• Jet skis brought more people into the boat market.

To be fair, local obstetrics-gynecological practices figured out disruptive innovation years ago, using nurse practitioners for annual exams and other basic procedures. Most other physician practices have not.

Information systems help

Take Care does not claim to be a medical home. Information systems that capture best practices in primary health care guide nurses on what to do and when to recommend a follow-up physician visit. (The company has a National Medical Advisory Board, chaired by an early advocate of health policy reform, Dr. David Nash.)

Your physician gets an electronic medical record of your Take Care experience(s). Lack a primary care doctor? Take Care will find one.

Take Care's strategy is brilliant because it offers a disruptive innovation that not just lowers costs.

Walgreen's Take Care also eliminates significant compromises in using doctors -- waiting for appointments, travel time and oftentimes-inconvenient hours.

Who might disrupt your industry, slicing costs or eliminating compromises customers regularly experience? Think ahead. You may not be as lucky as local physician practices. They have a window of time before Take Care targets smaller metro markets like ours.

You can also have advance warning, if you think strategically.

Kay Plantes is a Madison economist, strategy consultant and executive educator.