Because someone needs to collect a comprehensive history from the patient to decide what kind of/if a referral is needed. The assembly line care at CVS isn’t geared for this.

It’s different because it requires significantly more diagnostic effort to determine the root cause, which corresponds to more effort to treat. Women have a urethra that’s extremely short. They can get a UTI from routine activities like having sex or wiping from back to front after having a bowel movement. The treatment for cases like these is extremely simple: just prescribe an antibiotic.

With males, the urethra is so long that it’s almost impossible to get a UTI because of things like these. When males get a UTI, they are caused by things like kidney stones, anatomical abnormalities, indwelling catheters, etc. Your average CVS practitioner is not going to be able to order imaging and determine whether your kidney stone needs to be broken up. Or make the determination as to whether surgery is needed to correct some other abnormality. Additionally, these complicating factors that cause UTIs in men can lead to more complications down the road. For example, if you have a kidney stone causing a UTI, you don’t have cystitis (infection of the bladder) but rather pyelonephritis (infection of the kidney). Giving an antibiotic will not treat this because the stone will continue to seed the infection. Meanwhile, you are at increased risk of having the infection spread to your blood (sepsis), which doesn’t generally happen with cystitis.

CVS cannot help you with this. Frankly I wouldn’t trust CVS with my primary care even for the categories that are in OP’s picture because CVS’s exam room care is meant to make money, not provide comprehensive care.

I’m not going to defend health insurance companies, but this is not because of your insurance. CVS will only see patients with simple medical problems because they 1) are not equipped for more in-depth diagnosis and treatment and 2) don’t want the liability associated with such. UTIs in males are medically complicated, by definition which has a very specific meaning. Males don’t just get UTIs like females do, because the male urethra is significantly longer, providing significantly more protection from bacterial retrogression to the bladder. The long story short is that if you are a male with a UTI you need to go to an actual healthcare facility and see a qualified professional, not an NP/PA at your local CVS.

Source: am a pharmacist

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