UCA: More Urgent Care Centers Are Offering Telemedicine—and On-Site Visits Are Trending Up

Results of the latest “snapshot” survey from the Urgent Care Association indicate that things could be looking up, at last, for urgent care centers. While the sample size is small (103 respondents), the results indicate that at least some operators are expanding services and seeing downward trends reverse. For one thing, 80% of responding urgent care centers are now offering telemedicine services, with a median of five encounters per day. That doesn’t appear to be coming at the expense of in-person visits, either, as the decrease in patient volume vs a year ago is slowing. The most recent data show that volume is down 46% from the previous year—an improvement over the previous survey’s figure of a 55% drop in business vs last year. Further, 32% of operators report making no modifications in their staffing—and 3% say they’ve actually added staff during the pandemic. Clearly we’re not out of the woods in terms of illness in the community or threats to urgent care clinics, but these results may show that trends are turning toward the positive. For more details on these results and other urgent care-specific information on the industry’s resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, visit the UCA’s dedicated Coronavirus Resources page.