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I'm not feeling so hot. Actually, I am feeling a little hot. And cold. Achy. Maybe I have mono? I duck into a MinuteClinic tucked in a back corner of a CVS near my home. There's no line. I'm greeted by a nurse practitioner who takes a detailed health history and gives me a quick exam. For my $20 insurance copay, he rules out allergies and major infections, diagnosing me with a nasty cold. Eighteen minutes later, I get a pat on the back, a reminder to rest, a record of my diagnosis, and a finger-point to the cold-medicine stash. "They keep the good stuff behind the counter," he advises.

Retail medical clinics, where a nurse practitioner handles routine issues such as colds, pinkeye, and bug bites, have gone from an experiment to a phenomenon in just a few years. There are now about 350 for-profit clinics run by some 40 different companies; the number of outlets could more than triple by the end of 2007. "We're seeing a tipping point," says Steve Wunker, an analyst for the health-care consulting firm Innosight. The industry has been boasting about its happy customers: It claims a 98% satisfaction rate.

Many doctors are decidedly less enthusiastic. The American Medical Association and many of its members have consistently bristled as the clinics have invaded their turf. The AMA even issued "nine principles" for acceptable clinic care last year. "There were all sorts of ways that the clinics appeared not to be adhering to the same standards for doctors in their offices," says Dr. Peter Carmel, an AMA board member. "We don't want to lose sight of patient quality in our haste to pay a cheaper price."

So are these clinics fast-food medicine, a potentially more dangerous sibling to fast-food dining? Or could they be a solution to our intractable health-care-cost problems?

This past June, the AMA issued "Resolution 705," which asked regulators to launch an investigation into, among other things, potential conflicts of interest posed by joint ventures between the clinics and their retailers. (CVS, for example, acquired MinuteClinic in 2006.) "When a pharmacy chain owns a clinic whose business it is to give prescriptions, it's easy to imagine ways in which that relationship could be abused," explains Carmel.

These intimations have the clinic industry firing back. "It's interesting that one part of the medical community wants to maintain the status quo in a system that everyone agrees is broken," complains Michael Howe, CEO of MinuteClinic. "They have not sat down with us to study the model."

Howe is a perfect prism through which to gauge the clinic business. He is himself the product of the fast-food industry: a onetime KFC executive and CEO of Arby's. When you study the business model of retail medical clinics, it does mimic the secrets of the fast-food industry's success. The clinics seek to offer convenient, predictable service and transparent pricing. Building costs are affordable and standard. Most clinics cost about $75,000 to $100,000 to set up; there's no capital-intensive equipment, such as imaging machines or costly additions such as lead-lined walls. Computerized systems help nurses--who have master's degrees or the equivalent--move systematically through a diagnosis.