Practice Management
Urgent Message: Rural urgent care is the industry’s fastest growing segment, influenced by rural primary care shortages, hospital closures and extended ED wait times, but operational staffing and reimbursement complexities must be navigated. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Citation: Ayers A. Rural Urgent Care Grows, But Challenges Remain. J Urgent Care Med. 2024; 19(3): 17-21 As access to care in rural areas continues to decline, urgent care (UC) can play a pivotal role in the …
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The percentage of urgent care visits involving a laceration procedure increased slightly from 0.75% in 2023 to 0.76% year-to-date in 2024, which is on-par with 2018 levels, according to Experity EMR analysis of more than 93.8 million urgent care visits, as of October 6, 2024. Over the past 15 years, the percentage of patients presenting with a laceration has gradually declined, attributed to a number of factors—chief among them being “case rate” reimbursement. Case rate …
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Urgent Message: Urgent care centers need documented, consistent, and reportable processes for receiving, tracking, responding to, and collecting payment on subpoenas for patient medical records. Citation: Ayers A. How Should an Urgent Care Handle Requests for Medical Records by Subpoena? J Urgent Care Med. 2024; 19(2): 29-32 Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, is President of Urgent Care Consultants and is Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Medical records are the critical foundation …
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As of September, 2024, there are a total of 14,245 urgent care centers in the United States, according to National Urgent Care Realty data. The charts above break down the footprint of urgent care centers by hospital affiliation, number of locations per operator, ages seen, and setting. From the data: 96% of urgent care centers treat all ages, whereas 4% specialize exclusively on pediatric populations 39% of urgent care centers are affiliated with a hospital …
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Urgent Message: Rapid growth in the autism spectrum disorder services (ASD) sector may present an expansion opportunity for urgent care operators who take the initiative to develop the necessary infrastructure. Citation: Ayers A. ASD Services Fit With Existing UC Business Models, J Urgent Care Med. 2024; 19 (1): 33-36 As the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) continues to rise—now affecting 1 in 36 children in the United States—demand for accessible services is greater than …
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According to the United States Department of Justice, the most common prescription drugs that are misused fall into 1 of 3 categories: opioid pain relievers/narcotics; depressants; and stimulants. Experity EMR data encapsulating 17,526,083 prescriptions written at 3,037 urgent care centers from January 1 to August 20, 2024, shows the vast majority of urgent care centers do not prescribe these medications at all, and of those that do, these medications represent a very small percentage of …
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Urgent Message: Urgent care operators must navigate emerging federal, state, and payer regulations when developing financial policies that require payment by credit card and when setting fees for bounced checks and denied credit card charges. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Citation: Ayers A. Guardrails for Nonsufficient Funds and Credit Card on File Fees. J Urgent Care Med. 2024; 18 (11): 41-43 Urgent care centers frequently charge a nonsufficient funds (NSF) fee when a patient’s check …
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Over the past 2 decades, urgent care has been on the forefront of consumerism. Increasingly, healthcare consumers are realizing how much they are contributing to the cost of healthcare delivery through taxes and payroll premium deductions, and therefore, they’re more motivated than ever to attain the full value of the benefits they’ve paid for. Urgent care has remained focused on the consumers’ sense of value by appealing directly to patients as clinics market their convenient …
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The net promoter score (NPS) is a customer experience metric devised by business researcher Fred Reichheld, MBA, which measures how likely customers are to recommend a product or service on a scale of 0-10. His 2006 book, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth, describes NPS as the most predictive metric of a company’s future success. As a benchmark, NPS scores are reported on the world’s leading brands. A review of more than …
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The table above shows the percentage of patients within an average day who arrived during each hour of operations, based on more than 13,000,000 patient encounters from January 1 to March 31, 2024, recorded in the Experity EMR. A patient arriving anywhere between 7:00AM and 7:59AM, for example, is categorized as arriving during the 7:00AM hour. This data is useful in determining staffing levels and opening hours. If the number of patient arrivals per hour …
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