Industry

MedExpress is the latest healthcare company to announce downsizing designed to trim operating expenses. WSAZ News in Huntington/Charleston, WV reported the company is laying off all registered nurses at 150 locations as early as September 7, in concert with even more widespread layoffs in the UnitedHealth Group/Optum universe. It’s a move not likely to be adopted by other urgent care operations, which for the most part do not count RNs among their clinical teams to …

Nurse practitioners and physician assistants—or, collectively, advanced-practice providers (APPs)—have been essential members of the urgent care clinical team for years. Their presence on the payroll enables urgent care operators to offer high-quality care to more patients on a daily basis than would be possible without them, or with an all-physician team. Now it seems even more healthcare employers are waking up to the benefits of working with APPs. According to new data from the U.S. …

Private equity (PE) investors started taking an interest in urgent care several years ago, and have continued to pony up considerable capital that is pushing industry expansion to new heights. The “yin” to that “yang” is that some healthcare providers are pushing back on what they seem to see as overinvolvement by PE in institutional operations and decision-making. An article featured on LinkedIn recently noted that the American College of Emergency Physicians has taken a …

JUCM News has been bringing you updates on the consequences of reduced hospital services for communities all over the country for some time now. Something that’s gone under the radar, however, is how difficult cost-cutting measures like reducing services can be on the providers who work in hospitals. Patients don’t stop coming just because a department closes, and too often they flock to the emergency room. At South Shore Health in South Weymouth, MA they …

The ability to access healthcare at any single point of access is becoming less appealing to healthcare consumers, according to new research from Wolters Klewer. Rather, a trend toward “decentralized care based on demographic differences, cost-driven decision-making, and shifting trust in care providers and settings” is pushing them to less traditional sites like retail pharmacies and urgent care centers. The authors called urgent care a “preferred setting” based on the findings that 57% of women …

Physician assistants and nurse practitioners (known collectively as advanced practice providers, or APPs) provide significant care in UCCs across the country. Given that they typically are paid less than physicians while also having the training to perform relatively complex tasks, many view them as indispensable to the success of an urgent care center. It should be of interest, then, that a movement has been afoot for several years now for PAs to change their title …

As you may recall, JUCM News just informed you that dozens of hospitals are cutting back on services and hours, or ceasing to provide service altogether in certain departments—and suggested that such moves, necessary as they may be, would have a spillover effect that could ultimately affect urgent care. Now there’s an article in Time magazine indicating that this is already happening. It quotes a county health official who recently visited a local hospital as saying …

The evolution of urgent care could be likened to a crusade. In the early days there were few believers, and those physicians who did dare to open up an urgent care center were derided as a “doc in a box.” Now, of course, venture capitalists and healthcare systems have verified the viability of the industry as a profit center. But some of the early skeptics have become some of the most vocal advocates of the …

As regular readers know, JUCM is unique in that it regularly publishes original, urgent care-specific research. Most (if not all) of that research has been conducted by urgent care providers and operators. Historically, however, urgent care has been all but invisible to mainstream medical researchers. There are indications that could be changing, however, as lately there have been several pieces of research conducted not by urgent care entities, but more traditional bodies that are using …

JUCM and JUCM News readers know that acuity degradation is a major concern in the urgent care industry. For a multitude of reasons, too many patients visiting urgent care centers are referred elsewhere when, on paper, they really should be able to receive care at the UC level. Now Experity Chief Operating Officer and regular JUCM contributor Monte Sandler has authored an article for HIT Consultant that proposes solutions. Increasing training opportunities for advanced-practice providers …