Published on
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], 9.5-9.6) in 2012 to 57.0 visits per 1,000 (95%CI, 56.8-57.2) in 2019. All physician specialties including family practice, internal medicine, general practice, and emergency medicine showed a decrease in their respective proportion of urgent care visits compared to 2012. The authors believe APPs are not supplanting physicians but instead are increasingly managing low-acuity conditions such as respiratory infections.
Seniors access urgent care: An exclusive JUCM analysis of proprietary Experity data from 2025 examining 28.1 million urgent care visits across all payer types reveals about 3% of visits were among those ages 81-98 years, and 14% of visits were among those ages 62-80 years.