Urgent care has faced many challenges since its inception—starting with trying to get healthcare consumers and insurers to understand what it has to offer that’s different from a traditional primary care practice or the emergency room. Through true market evolution—we’re talking Darwin, here—that hurdle has helped separate the wannabes from the real innovators. The latter came to grasp that a patient-friendly approach would be one obvious attribute that could keep waiting rooms full and good word-of-mouth buzzing. Many who failed to grasp that also failed to stay in business.
So, the results of a new study by the marketing consulting firm Prophet can be viewed as confirmation that urgent care has flourished at least partly because its founders were on the right track all along. The data plainly spell out that all healthcare environments would be well advised to adopt a more patient-friendly (ie, retail-like) approach to the patient experience. Organizational leaders across various practice settings seem to be getting the message—though the data below also seem to suggest that even those who are thinking outside the box might be too nervous to step outside it.
*Among healthcare providers surveyed.
Data source: Prophet. The Healthcare Shift: The Transformation to Consumer Centricity. 2018.