Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Editorialist: Freestanding ERs May Be Hurting Patients

Well-informed media pundits are catching on to what urgent care insiders—among others—have been saying for some time now: freestanding emergency rooms may be able to provide necessary treatment in most situations, but overall are not contributing to efficient, appropriate patient care. One newspaper editorialist in Texas puts the question in very simple terms: “Are they good for patients?” Writing in the Dallas Morning News , Brett Berrett lays out his rationale for answering his own …

Freestanding ERs Criticized for Billing—and Cherry-Picking Wealthy Patients

The rapid growth of freestanding emergency rooms—as well as consumer outrage over controversial billing practices—continues to draw the attention of researchers and legislators around the country. Most typically found in affluent neighborhoods, some freestanding emergency centers can be hard to distinguish from lower cost urgent care centers, setting expectations for some patients that they’ll receive an urgent care-size bill. When the cost more closely resembles the cost of a trip to the ED, patients cry …

Freestanding ERs Leave Lower-Income Patients in Need of Other Options

If it seems like freestanding emergency rooms are popping up everywhere, try driving through a less-tony zip code. Researchers from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found growth of the ERs is concentrated in high-income areas with growing populations, more traditional ERs, a higher proportion of privately insured patients and a lower proportion of Medicaid beneficiaries. That leaves lower-income patients who need immediate care stuck waiting in the hospital emergency room, even if their complaints are …

More Data Show Freestanding ERs Cost More Than Urgent Care

Insurers and other parties who hold a stake in the economics of urgent care tend to respond to cold hard data. Here’s some: Seven of the top 10 reasons patients sought care in a freestanding emergency room in 2014 could have been treated safely—but much less expensively—in an urgent care center, according to a new study by the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC). Take sore throat, which topped the list of reasons …