Practice Management
Urgent care centers are distinct from emergency rooms by virtue of the amount of time patients can expect to wait, cost, and the acuity of care offered. A federal court in Rhode Island determined that, at least in one case, they can be held to the same requirements of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) as hospital emergency departments, though. Friedrich, et al v South County Hospital Healthcare System, et al centered …
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The Urgent Care Association’s annual Benchmarking Report reveals these are boom times for the urgent care industry. The number of centers in the U.S. is up 10% from the previous year (to 7,357); 96% of urgent care centers saw more patients in 2015 than in 2014; and 92% of centers kept wait times to ≤30 minutes. Best of all, nine out of 10 centers expect continued growth, with many also saying they’re extending the services …
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Ochsner Health System has enriched its urgent care and occupational medicine holdings by buying Millennium Healthcare Management (MHM). The deal includes MHM’s 12 urgent care centers—nearly doubling the number of locations Ochsner will have in southeast Louisiana, to 25—and four occupational health clinics. Ochsner, one of the first companies to open urgent care centers in the region after Hurricane Katrina, has treated roughly 135,000 patients among its facilities annually.
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Regardless of the setting in which they practice, urgent care clinicians play a crucial role in emergency medicine, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians—so much so that AAFP officially renamed one of its subgroups the Member Interest Group Emergency Medicine/Urgent Care (MIG EM/UC). In a new review article published in the current issue of Annals of Family Medicine, Banks, et al note that a “persistent shortages of residency-trained emergency physicians” creates a need …
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An expected holiday rush moved Baptist Health Madisonville (Alabama) to implore area residents to try urgent care for medical needs that might not warrant a trip to its emergency room. Kristy Quinn, the hospital’s marketing and public relations director, says high traffic times like the early-winter holidays make it difficult for the hospital to treat low-acuity cases that could be handled safely in the urgent care setting. “If people can evaluate what they are coming …
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The growth of telemedicine in urgent care and other settings is helping feed greater access to nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Relaxed scope of practice laws in both red and blue states, as well as evolving digital health technology that exploits the popularity of smartphones and tablets, make it easier and less expensive for patients to connect online—a model that typically employs NPs and PAs under the supervision of an on-site physician. This is further …
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If it were a nation unto itself, the U.S. healthcare system would have the fifth-largest economy in the world. As it is, it accounts for more than 17% of the U.S. economy—with spending in the emergency room being the fastest-growing portion, according to a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. U.S. Spending on Personal Health Care and Public Health, 1996-2013, by Joseph L. Dieleman, PhD, points out that Americans spend more …
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Increasing healthcare spending and an aging population are expected to boost demand for cost-effective, convenient medical care—adding up to strong growth in the urgent care marketplace for the remainder of the decade, according to a new report from Market Research Search Engine (MRRSE). The company’s conclusions are based on in-depth interviews with key opinion leaders within urgent care, but also on extensive secondary research. The report describes the industry as “highly fragmented,” with “small players” …
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Industry executives predict that as more patients come to understand the level and breadth of service available at urgent care centers, along with the cost and efficiency benefits, they’ll flock to centers in even greater numbers than they have in recent years. For example, the Urgent Care Association estimates that the average cost of a trip to an urgent care facility is $155, comparing favorably with the cost of an average trip to the emergency …
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Despite ongoing growth in the number of urgent care centers, many institutions still fail to see the profitable big picture of aligning with urgent care, or of opening locations of their own. A study by the University of Minnesota and Urgent Care Partners (UCP) reveals that healthcare providers are not actively coordinating the growing urgent care primary care channel, or effectively managing downstream referrals. The UCP Urgent Care Survey found that 66% of urgent care …
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