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One of the key “selling” points of urgent care has always been that if patients who don’t have limb- or life-threatening concerns are able to get acute care someplace other than the emergency room, they would go there, thereby lowering cost, wait times, and risk associated with the ED. Now there’s evidence to support the first part of this premise, thanks to a new report from Mesirow Investment Banking.
As seen in the graph below, data illustrate that the mere presence of an urgent care center is enough to reduce volume in area EDs, leading the authors of the Mesirow report to conclude that “an explosion in UCCs in recent years…has resulted in a transformation of how people seek urgent medical treatment.”
That Notion That Urgent Care Centers Help Volume in the ED? It’s True