US News & World Report Analyzes the ‘Meteoric’ Growth of Urgent Care

Recognizing what you’ve known for years—that the appeal of urgent care to the U.S. patient population continues to grow, with no signs of diminishing—US News & World Report turned its attention to why that’s the case in a recent issue. Calling the rise of urgent care “meteoric,” the article calls out three primary factors—accessibility and convenience, cost savings, and array of services—as chiefly responsible for drawing more patients every year, with the number of facilities also growing to accommodate them. The article references data published recently in JAMA Internal Medicine, which we’ve already covered in this space, and quotes Urgent Care Association CEO Laurel Stoimenoff as noting that “nearly half of all visits to urgent care centers result in an average charge of less than $150—compared to the average cost of an ER visit at $2,250.” Finally, the piece explains to the reader that urgent care also benefits emergency rooms, rather than posing a threat as competitors: “The trend toward greater use by consumers of urgent care clinics is also helpful to the staffs of emergency rooms, many of which are stretched to their limits treating patients for life-threatening trauma and conditions, like heart attacks and strokes.”