In early 2008, UCA revamped its annual survey in conjunction with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University with the goal of assuring that the UCA Benchmarking Committee’s efforts produced a scientifically valid report.
Here, we present some of the data from this landmark survey, to which 436 urgent care centers responded.
In this issue: Which payors foot the biggest portion of the bill among responding urgent care centers?
* Includes employer contracts and workers compensation.
The results are not dramatically different from the last time the question was asked on a UCA benchmarking survey (2006); slightly higher percentages are coming from Medicaid and Medicare, a slightly lower percentage of patients are paying out-of-pocket, and private insurance is covering exactly the same proportion, according to the current report.
The current UCA survey report also offered comparison data with primary care and emergency medicine. The portion of payments coming from the occupational medicine segment was dramatically higher in urgent care than in either primary or emergency care, while Medicaid paid a much higher percentage in emergency care than in either urgent care or primary care. Other categories saw less variation among the three settings.
Acknowledgement: Data submitted by Robin M. Weinick, PhD, at the time of the survey assistant professor, Harvard Medical School and senior scientist, Institute for Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Weinick is also a member of the JUCM Advisory Board. Financial support for this study was provided by UCA.
If you are aware of new data that you’ve found useful in your practice, let us know via e-mail to [email protected]. We’ll share your discovery with your colleagues in an upcoming issue of JUCM>