Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Why Urgent Care Has Become Healthcare’s Front Door

Urgent care is evolving into an essential entry point for the healthcare system, driven by primary care shortages as well as shifting patient expectations, according to Andrea Giamalva, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Experity, in an interview with Medical Economics. She says urgent care is increasingly becoming the front door for many patients because so many Americans don’t have primary care relationships, especially younger generations. That means urgent care must be able to triage appropriately …

Young Adults Rely on Urgent Care as Their De Facto Access Point

Recent data from the National Health Interview Survey shows 90.3% of U.S. adults report having a usual source of care. Most rely on traditional sites, and 77.5% use a physician’s office or health center. Of note, 8.6% identify urgent care or retail clinics as their go-to healthcare setting, with similar rates among men and women. That means as many as 22 million U.S. adults may be using urgent care as their usual source of care. …

Imaging Ranks As Top Service Among Outpatient Visits

Nationally, imaging accounted for 24% of all outpatient visits and 17% of outpatient spending in 2022, according to a new issue brief from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI). Only diagnostic testing and labs accounted for a larger proportion of outpatient visits by category (31%). Mammography and chest x-rays are the most common among imaging services. In terms of reimbursement, commercial payment for imaging is higher than what Medicare pays, with commercial reimbursement averaging 245–314% …

One-Third of Adults Use AI For Health, Avoiding Professional Care

Some 32% of U.S. adults say they have turned to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots in the past year for health information, according to 2 recent surveys. The KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust found younger and lower-income individuals often turn to AI for help to avoid the costs and access barriers when seeking traditional healthcare services. What’s concerning is that many users skip professional follow-up entirely, including 58% of those seeking mental health …

New Center Sites May Be Harder To Secure In Tight Real Estate Market

A new real estate report highlights a critical shortage of U.S. outpatient facilities, particularly in fast-growing Sun Belt markets. The JLL 2026 Medical Outpatient Building Perspective notes that while patient demand is surging due to aging demographics and a preference for cost-effective, community-based care, new construction has stalled because of high costs and financial risk. With 93% occupancy rates across the nation, space for independent practices is scarce; most new builds are currently dedicated to …

Claim Submission Final Rule Puts Your Fax Machine On Notice

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a rule this month that is meant to drive healthcare transactions away from fax machines and postal mail. Too many providers are still using these old-school workflows with surprising frequency for submitting claims documentation today, and CMS believes the Adoption of Standards for Health Care Claims Attachments Transactions and Electronic Signatures Final Rule represents a major step toward fully electronic workflows, according to a press release. …

Many Independent Florida NPs Working Outside of Primary Care

The American Medical Association (AMA) frequently cautions against certain expanded scope-of-practice allowances for nurse practitioners (NPs) in everyday patient care. In a new post, AMA points to a study in Family Practice that examined whether NPs in Florida are practicing within the state’s requirement, which stipulates that autonomous NPs must work within primary care. Since the passage of an expanded scope-of-practice rule in 2020, Florida has allowed NPs who complete at least 3,000 clinical practice …

New ‘Visual Combo’ Code Brings Reimbursement Risks

Effective January 1, 2026, the Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services mandated a critical coding change for urgent care: Visually read COVID-19/flu combination tests must now be billed under the single code CPT 87812. This replaces the previous standard of unbundling the tests into 2 separate codes (CPT 87811 and CPT 87804) and was intended to be revenue-neutral. However, a national analysis of January 2026 data by Urgent Care Consultants exclusively for JUCM reveals a …

APPs Manage Half of Medicare Urgent Care Visits as Volume Doubles

While a study in JAMA Network Open last week found urgent care visits among traditional Medicare patients doubled between 2012 and 2019, at the same time, researchers also found the percentage of Medicare patients managed by advanced practice providers (APPs) increased from 21.0% in 2012 to 50.8% in 2019. According to the authors, visits seen by APPs showed a 497% relative increase in the study period, from 9.5 visits per 1,000 (95% confidence interval [CI], …

AI Scribes Reduce Workload, Burnout Among Clinicians

In a quality improvement study of 263 ambulatory clinicians across 6 U.S. health systems published in JAMA Network Open, researchers found the use of an ambient AI scribe for 30 days significantly reduced professional burnout and administrative burden. The proportion of clinicians reporting burnout dropped from 51.9% to 38.8% (odds ratio 0.26; 95% confidence interval, 0.13–0.54). Significant improvements were observed in note-related cognitive task load (mean difference 2.64 points on a 10-point scale), focused attention …

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