Industry

If testing activities in China are any indication—and can be believed—then widespread screening will be essential to really opening up businesses and culture in the U.S. Officials in Wuhan, where the pandemic really started to take off, say they’ve tested nearly 7 million people, turning up just 206 who were found to have asymptomatic COVID-19; clearly, that’s below the threshold of cases that would prohibit easing social distancing restrictions. This could be a prime opportunity …

The decline in patients visiting urgent care centers continues to slow around the country, with most locations continuing to be open and ready to provide care—and conduct tests for COVID-19. According to the latest data emerging from the Urgent Care Association’s weekly member survey, 80% of operators say all their centers are open, with 20% reporting that only some centers remain open; none have had to close down all their locations. They’re contributing to the …

As state governments continue to grapple with trying to keep residents safe while also making plans to reopen the economy responsibly, some governors are looking to include healthcare experts in discussions. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is one—and Velocity Urgent Care CEO Alan Ayers, MBA, MAcc (who is also JUCM’s own senior editor, practice management) has been tapped to participate on the  Virginia Department of Health COVID-19 Testing Advisory Council. Ayers will represent the clinical and …

CityMD and ChoiceOne are among the growing numbers of urgent care operators who are offering no-cost COVID-19 to uninsured individuals at certain locations. New York City has estimated that CityMD is conducting 6,000 tests at 123 locations every day, currently. The city plans to deploy an “army of tracers” to follow up with contacts of those who test positive in the near future. Meanwhile, ChoiceOne is offering free testing to patients in its Baltimore, Caroline, …

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 …

You don’t need to be told that these are hard times for urgent care. In addition to the very real problems many individual operators, clinicians, and staffers are experiencing thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry as a whole is facing uncertainty. Even the Urgent Care Association’s annual convention had to be recast as a virtual event. Still, UCA is continuing in its mission to advocate and serve as a resource for the urgent care …

Some urgent care operators, especially those in hard-hit areas like New York City, have been in the thick of the fight against COVID-19 from the start. Others experienced dramatic drop-offs in patient visits (and still may be) before developing plans that would allow them to serve their communities in new and different ways; classifying some locations as testing centers and launching telemedicine services allowed them to continue bringing in revenue while providing much-needed care. Now …

We’ve heard anecdotally that some urgent care operations are experiencing serious shortfalls in patient volume, while others are “all hands on deck” in dealing with patients who have, or are concerned they have, COVID-19. To get a better handle on how the industry as a whole is faring, the Urgent Care Association started surveying members on a weekly basis. In the initial iteration, 82% of respondents reported that all their centers were open while 18% …

As you may have seen, the Urgent Care Association just came out with the latest version of its Urgent Care Benchmarking Report. And if you weren’t aware of that until now, be assured that other segments of the healthcare marketplace have noticed. Becker’s Hospital Review, in fact, alerted their online readers to the report’s update recently, highlighting three key pieces of data. After relaying that the urgent care marketplace continues to grow across the board, …

We tend to look at the urgent care industry as an American phenomenon (which is understandable, given the total emersion necessary to keep pace with patient demands and maintaining compliance with a bevy of regulations issued by payers, state boards, HIPAA…). However, the same revolution that has been taking place in the U.S. for decades is ongoing in countries around the world. New Zealand, for example, has a very active urgent care marketplace and a …