Marketplace

The internet age has made it possible for urgent care operators to reach patients who would have otherwise never heard of them. When someone wakes up sick and needs to see a provider, they’re likely to head right to Google and type in “urgent care” and their location. This may be especially true of travelers just passing through your area now that vacation season is here. Savvy operators have developed methods (such as search engine …

In announcing their plans to merge, CityMD and Summit Medical Group say they envision creating a single organization that would offer patients a “seamless experience across a full spectrum of high-quality primary, specialty, and urgent care.” It would be premature to assume they’ll succeed or fail in that attempt, but what is undeniable is that the resulting organization will be a very large one. CityMD has become nearly ubiquitous in the New York City metropolitan …

Urgent care has been heralded for its patient-friendly (many would even say consumer-friendly) approach to providing quality care. Patients respond well to it because it’s such a contrast to what they’ve become accustomed to: long waits, brusk treatment, and generally feeling like they’re being rushed through a very important and personal experience. Having seen how well the new approach works, however, more traditional healthcare facilities are now jumping on the consumerism bandwagon. Some health systems …

Every patient covets convenience and speed when they make choices about where to seek immediate care. Urgent care and retail clinics both offer those attributes. Just as much (if not more), though, patients want to know they’re going to get the quality of care they need—and that’s where they see a difference between retail and urgent care, according to a new study from WD Partners. The research actually compared those two segments along with primary …

More than a quarter (26%) of Americans who live in rural areas have not been able to get healthcare when they needed it at some point in recent years, according to new research National Public Radio conducted with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This in spite of the fact that 87% have one form of health insurance or another. The reason? Rural hospitals, which many rural …

You’re accustomed to reading the latest good news about the urgent care industry here. Lately, you’re almost as likely to see it on your local TV stations and in the newspaper. But on a website called Shopping Centers Today (SCT)? Yes! And if you somehow came across the post we’re referring to, you’d know that members of the shopping center industry are thrilled to see urgent care continuing to prosper—and that more and more urgent …

Working with healthcare giant Sanitas USA, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BC/BS) plans in numerous states are opening up primary care clinics that further complicate the competitive landscape occupied by urgent care, retail clinics, hospital systems, and traditional medical practices. The partnership already operates such practices in several markets in Florida and New Jersey, both of which may be expanding. Next on the horizon are plans to work with Health Care Services Corp., which owns BC/BS …

The stated intention of the Affordable Care Act was to move the U.S. to a nation in which healthcare insurance was available to every citizen. Part of the subtext for its effect on the healthcare system was that if everyone had access to traditional health insurance, more people would engage in preventive healthcare, leading to lower need for emergency room visits and associated costs. That cause-and-effect has yet to be realized, however. While 20 million …

Urgent care has benefited from (or perhaps driven) the trend of patients wanting to see a qualified provider the same day they need to, without an appointment. Going hand-in-hand with that is the need to find such a provider. Enter social media. When people post a review on Yelp! or gift an urgent care center with a “like” on its Facebook page, people notice—and may be more inclined to visit that location. A new study …

As even the most frigid regions of the continental U.S. embrace spring and look forward to warmer weather, the time is right to start thinking about what that means to your urgent care operation. Besides seeing more warm-weather injuries and illnesses, as well as an influx of patients who are just passing through your community on vacation, there are seasonal opportunities to raise awareness of your business and reach people who may have been hibernating …