Industry

With hospitalizations for COVID-19 at their highest point since January of this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID data tracker, some hospital systems are putting out the word that urgent care centers may be the best option for nonemergent complaints. WVU Medicine in West Virginia, for one, went to the local media to announce that patients with complaints like ear or throat pain, abdominal complaints and other similar issues should …

Urgent care operators stood ready to pitch in as COVID-19 ravaged states throughout the U.S. early in the pandemic—but were largely unable to do so thanks to mystifying decisions on where testing supplies and the like would be allocated. According to research conducted by Experity, however, that changed in a big way in 2020, when urgent care visits jumped 58%. In fact, as Experity CEO David Stern, MD, CPC explained to Healthcare IT News, urgent …

In urgent care’s infancy, the stereotypical operator was an independent (some might even say maverick) physician who was dissatisfied with the traditional way of practicing medicine. Not seeing acceptable alternatives, he or she might get some resources together and open their own urgent care center, essentially becoming owner-operators. Over the years, however, as JUCM readers know, hospital systems and venture capitalists recognized they were missing out on a good thing and started buying or launching …

The American Hospital Association, the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the American Medical Association recently threw some serious shade at the urgent care industry. The AHA and ACEP took aim at UnitedHealthcare’s plans to review all emergency room visits among its members to assess whether they were “real” emergencies or not, and to force patients to foot the bill if it’s determined that a visit to the ED was actually nonemergent. The problem is, …

The retail drugstore industry has worked hard to market itself as a one-stop destination for their customers’ healthcare needs, offering everything from strep tests to flu shots just steps away from the magazine rack and the candy aisle. Needless to say, they leave out the part about urgent care centers offering the same services in addition to x-rays, sutures, and many other, higher-acuity services in a purely clinical setting. This is not to say that …

With many urgent care centers seeing net revenue of $120 per visit or less, case rate (flat fee) reimbursement disincentivizing a high level of care, and Medicaid reimbursement at less than $100 in most states, emerging changes in reimbursements for rural health clinics could be a powerful argument for looking at expansion in underserved “country” communities. The recently enacted Consolidated Appropriations Act includes updates to reimbursements for Rural Health Clinics (RHCs), defined by the Centers …

Readers of JUCM News are painfully aware of downturns in urgent care patient visits throughout much of the COVID-19 pandemic. As testing supplies and now vaccines have become more readily available, and patients feel safer venturing to healthcare facilities, a healthy rebound is in effect at urgent care centers across the country. According to an article just published online by Modern Healthcare, however, hospital emergency rooms are having a tough time recouping the patients who …

The COVID-19 pandemic has put us all to a test. Urgent care operators have had to be creative in finding new approaches to offering care while keeping workers safe, and ensuring that patients have felt as comfortable as possible visiting when they need same-day medical attention. There’s a secondary price to pay for all that vigilance, though: The stress and fear that accompanied the pandemic have taken a toll on our collective mental and emotional …

Mask mandates, capacity limits, and social distancing suggestions are starting to fall by the wayside across the country, leading urgent care operators to reconsider operational changes they may have instituted at the height of the pandemic. As JUCM News readers know, many urgent care centers diverted patients to alternate locations so resources could be dedicated to COVID-19 testing or other related activities. Now, however, Western Sierra Medical Clinic in California, Fayetville Urgent Care in Arkansas, …

In the eyes of many, physician assistants and nurse practitioners (known collectively as advanced practice providers, or APPs) have become indispensable members of the urgent care clinical team. Given that they work under a lower pay scale than physicians, it’s possible for an urgent care operator to hire more APPs than physicians, thereby increasing the productivity of the practice without a corresponding jump in payroll—and reserving more of the physician’s time for the highest-acuity patients. …