Not Controversial, Just Hard to Come by: Fair Pay for Urgent Care Services Rendered

It’s safe to say no one reading this would disagree that urgent care centers fulfill an essential role in the U.S. healthcare landscape of 2019. It follows that fair compensation for care provided at an urgent care center should be a given. As you undoubtedly know, that’s not necessarily the case, however, and the Urgent Care Association is trying to make sure the parties with the authority to change that inequity get the message. UCA just issued a position statement to both enlighten the uninformed on the importance of urgent care centers and make a case for fair payer reimbursement. Considering data from the Centers for Disease Control and its own Benchmarking Report, UCA estimates in the statement that 24% of primary care visits and 13.4% of all outpatient visits are made to urgent care centers. And yet, there exists a striking disparity in reimbursement for similar services in UCA’s view. You can read the entire statement here. You might find some of the data helpful in your own negotiations with payers.