Industry

The growing authority—and employment—of physician assistants and nurse practitioners in many practice settings demonstrates the practical need for high-level clinicians who cost less to employ than physicians. You can engage more of them than you can physicians, per dollar. That helps the operation run more smoothly without breaking the bank, theoretically. As PAs and NPs, known collectively as advanced-practice providers (APPs), grow in stature, however, a movement is afoot to free them from the bonds …

Americans spend more time traveling to and waiting to be seen by a healthcare provider than any other single pursuit, including in the infamously inefficient motor vehicle department, according to a study just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, that time amounts to an economic cost of roughly $89 billion dollars annually—and that’s not counting the time they spend in the exam room. Over the entire survey period (2006–2017), the sum approaches …

The latest Benchmarking Report from the Urgent Care Association shows 8% growth in the urgent care industry over 2017, continuing an unbroken record of year-over-year growth and confirming that more people than ever are hungry for on-demand, affordable care. It also indicates that urgent care operations have been successful in adapting their offerings to fit the evolving needs of the patient population—and doing so with increasing efficiency, at that. The 2018 Benchmarking Report notes that …

Patients may sometimes be inclined to look at a medical bill and envision their doctor sliding behind the wheel of their brand-new Bentley at the end of a shift. We know that’s not exactly how it works, but now a new study in Health Affairs presents an academic approach to quantifying that fact. It suggests the growth in private insurance costs lies more with hospital prices than it does the cost of the physician’s time. …

Urgent care veterans, insurers, and certainly any patient who has ever visited both have been saying this for a long time, but a new study out of Vanderbilt University Medical Center confirms that freestanding emergency rooms are likely to charge more (sometimes a lot more) than urgent care centers for the same services. The study, newly published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine, uncovered certain cost characteristics of freestanding EDs that had been converted from …

By now we’ve all gotten the point that patients want excellent care when they need it, which may not be when their primary care provider or a specialist they’d like to see is available. A new study from NRC Health reveals that the convenience factor is actually a higher priority than quality of care when those patients are deciding where to go. The survey included 223,000 healthcare consumers, 51% of whom said convenience and access …

Urgent care insiders and advocates have known it intuitively for a long time, but now data are bearing out the fact that urgent care centers really do help thin out the congestion (and associated cost) in emergency rooms—especially in areas where there are multiple locations to choose from. A multistate study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows there’s a 1.4% increase in ED visits by privately insured patients when urgent care centers are …

Hackensack Meridian Health, the largest hospital chain in New Jersey, is merging with Carrier Clinic as the first step in staking a claim in an emerging urgent care “specialty.” Hackensack and Carrier, which specializes in treating patients with substance abuse and mental health issues, will open an urgent care facility specifically for patients with such concerns in Neptune, NJ. The aim will be to offer walk-in care for patients in crisis, largely in order to …

Regular readers of JUCM News know that hospitals have been buying or starting their own urgent care centers in greater numbers in recent years. It’s self-evident that they see it as a good business to enter, but a new article in the Wall Street Journal confirms the economic advantages of keeping patients in-house, instead of referring them out to urgent care centers or specialty practices outside of the hospital’s organization—as in, millions of dollars in …

It’s typical for healthcare providers who are licensed in one state to be permitted to treat patients only in that state. A new set of regulations could open to door to treating patients in multiple states, however—at least virtually. Currently, 24 states belong to the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which reduces barriers that prohibit providers from treating patients in multiple states if they’re only licensed in one. Physicians do have to apply and pay fees …