Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Are Alternative Payment Models Catching On?

There’s little evidence that emerging payment models (eg, concierge medicine, cash-only practices, and accountable care organizations [ACOs]) are gaining any serious traction in urgent care—but that doesn’t mean they’re not making headway elsewhere. ACOs, in particular, are growing in usage among physicians, according to the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2017. Usage of cash-only and concierge models is also growing, albeit much more modestly, as the graph below shows. Data source: Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2017. …

Demand for Medical Assistants Will Outstrip Supply by 2024

Medical assistants (MAs) are the core of urgent care’s clinical support workforce (as noted in Cost Effective Staffing with Medical Assistants in the January, 2017 edition of JUCM; see https://www.jucm.com/cost-effective-staffing-medical-assistants/). However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for MAs is expected to outstrip supply over the next decade, just as the aging baby-boom population will increase demand for physician services—especially in the primary care setting, where the bulk of MAs work. For urgent …

How Patients Pay Their Bills

Of the survey participants, most (78%) manage billing with in-house staff, while the rest contract for their billing services or use other methods. Such billing efforts cost an average amount of $215.91 per patient—about $3,336,967 per site and $8,876,333 per urgent care center. Small wonder, then, that 14% of respondents cannot yet call their business “profitable.”

Urgent Care Occupational Medicine Efforts Should Focus on the Public Sector

Over two-thirds of urgent care centers offer a blend of occupational medicine services (generally defined as treatment of workers compensation injuries, conducting physicals for compliance or fitness for duty, and substance abuse testing), according to the Urgent Care Association.1 One challenge for those that do is that the overall incidence of workplace injuries has declined significantly this century, due to an overall shift from a manufacturing to a service and information economy, the offshoring/outsourcing of …

SEASONALITY OF SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS VS NORMAL URGENT CARE SEASONALITY

A Practice Velocity study of 63,000 patient charts presenting with one of 35 diagnoses associated with sexually transmitted infections (STI) between January 2010 and November 2016 reveals the highest incidence occurs during the late summer/early autumn. With urgent care’s typical seasonality driven by upper respiratory illness, which is most prevalent in the winter months, STI presentations actually run contra-seasonal to “typical” urgent care volume.

100 Largest Urgent Care Center Operators

The 100 largest urgent care operators in the United States run approximately 25% of the locations under their banners, according to research by Practice Velocity and National Urgent Care Realty. They’re getting even bigger, too; the number of locations owned by the companies on the list expanded by about 20% this year. While ownership was once delineated between hospital-affiliated and independents, several multi-unit operators now operate in some (but not all) of their markets as …

Urgent Care Seasonality: Monthly Average Visits as a Percentage of Average Daily Visits

The following chart, based data from a Practice Velocity study of more than 20,000,000 patient visits over a 5-year period, shows that urgent care exhibits a strong pattern of seasonality. The average daily visits in each month vary from average daily visits over the course of a year. For example, on an average day in July, there are 14% fewer patients than the baseline number, whereas in an average day in December, there are 25% …

Flu as a percentage of total visits

The following chart, based on a study of over 20,000,000 patients’ records in Practice Velocity’s database of patient visits across the United States, illustrates the frequency of influenza diagnoses between January 2010 and October 2016 relative to total urgent care visits that carried an evaluation and management (E/M) code. The period of December through January is the typical peak of the flu season, although in some years flu outbreaks occur somewhat earlier or later. In …

Most Frequently Occurring X-Ray Views in Urgent Care

Availability of basic x-ray capabilities differentiates urgent care centers from walk-in primary-care and retail clinics, which lack such capabilities. According to an analysis of nearly 50,000 patient encounters by Practice Velocity and Teleradiology Specialists, approximately 11% of urgent care visits require an x-ray. The top 10 views, summarized here by Current Procedural Technology (CPT) codes, account for 86% of urgent care x-rays. (Note: The top 10 views include 11 views because of the equal percentage of …

Number of Urgent Care Clinics by State (as of July 2016)

In July 2016, the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine (JUCM) concluded a count of unique urgent care centers across its print and digital subscription base. Estimates of urgent care centers can vary depending on whom you ask, because many different definitions are used to determine what constitutes an urgent care center. JUCM and the Urgent Care Association of America define urgent care centers as having all of the following characteristics: Walk-in or unscheduled care Expanded …