Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Urgent Care May Become Even More Important as Physician Shortage Approaches

By 2030, there will be a significant gap between the number of physicians who are practicing in the U.S. and the number needed to care for our aging population, according to new data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). At best, it would amount to a shortfall of 40,800 providers—at worst, 104,900, the association says. For primary care, the estimated shortage will be between 8,700 and 43,100 physicians by 2030. Emergency medicine, anesthesiology, …

PCPs Starting to See the Advantages of Urgent Care

More primary care physicians understand urgent care’s rightful place in the continuum of care—and the advantages it might offer traditional office-based practices, according to a new article in Medical Economics magazine (How Urgent Care Relates to Physicians’ Practices, http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/news/how-urgent-care-relates-physicians-practices). David Meyers, MD, chief medical officer for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, reflects that “urgent care centers help put resources in the right places” by providing immediate care to those who need it at …

NC: Can’t Wait for Your PCP? ‘Go to the Urgent Care’

With a storm of protest from state workers still ringing in their ears, North Carolina legislators have backed off a plan to eliminate traditional “80/20” insurance (in which plan members pay 20% of healthcare costs until their deductible is met). Instead, they’ll incentivize preventive care by lowering copays for routine medical visits and some prescription drugs in 2017. That could mean higher traffic in primary care practices—and even longer waits to see PCPs in a …

Will Medicare Change Make Urgent Care More Appealing?

The end of 2015 means the end of a 10 percent bonus paid to primary care physicians who care for Medicare patients. Depending on how they react, some practices could see more patients turn to urgent care for acute complaints. Essentially, primary care practices will have three options once their bonus disappears: eat the revenue loss, take in more patients to make up for it, or charge patients more. The bonus program was initiated in …