Practice Management
Industry executives predict that as more patients come to understand the level and breadth of service available at urgent care centers, along with the cost and efficiency benefits, they’ll flock to centers in even greater numbers than they have in recent years. For example, the Urgent Care Association estimates that the average cost of a trip to an urgent care facility is $155, comparing favorably with the cost of an average trip to the emergency …
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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 …
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Apparently, patients don’t see a need to pay Cadillac prices for the “Cadillac” of healthcare services (wherever they may exist). Most participants in a new report published in Health Affairs don’t associate higher cost with higher quality when it comes to making healthcare decisions—a departure from the expected consumer mindset when it comes to buying other goods and services. Among the questions included in the survey: “Would you say higher prices are typically a sign …
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Visits to urgent care resulted in lower costs and a lower rate of return visits compared with visits to the emergency room among younger Medicaid patients with low acuity symptoms, as reflected in a new study in published in Pediatrics. Researchers at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, MO and Children’s Hospital Association in Overland Park, KS looked at 5.9 million ED and urgent care visits by Medicaid-covered children between 2010 and 2012. …
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