Urgent care centers have been eating away at patient volumes previously owned by hospital systems, prompting those systems to get into the urgent care game by buying or building locations. Simply setting up shop may not be enough to recapture those patients, however, if they’re run along the same lines as the hospitals themselves, suggests an analysis published by Becker’s Hospital Review. It goes so far as to suggest that hospital systems could learn a great deal from studying the urgent care playbook—and may have to, in order to remain competitive with urgent care, wellness clinics, and “boutique medicine” operations. In addition to opening their own urgent care centers—and operating them along the ethos that has worked well industry-wide—the author suggests that hospital systems adopt a number of key urgent care attributes, including but not limited to the following:
- Basic “minor care” services (eg, fast-tracked treatment for sinus infections, cuts and lacerations, etc.)
- Walk-in vaccinations
- Occupational medicine
- School and sports physicals
- Pediatric-specific care
- Telemedicine
- Rural health clinics