Industry

Urgent care veterans, insurers, and certainly any patient who has ever visited both have been saying this for a long time, but a new study out of Vanderbilt University Medical Center confirms that freestanding emergency rooms are likely to charge more (sometimes a lot more) than urgent care centers for the same services. The study, newly published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine, uncovered certain cost characteristics of freestanding EDs that had been converted from …

By now we’ve all gotten the point that patients want excellent care when they need it, which may not be when their primary care provider or a specialist they’d like to see is available. A new study from NRC Health reveals that the convenience factor is actually a higher priority than quality of care when those patients are deciding where to go. The survey included 223,000 healthcare consumers, 51% of whom said convenience and access …

Urgent care insiders and advocates have known it intuitively for a long time, but now data are bearing out the fact that urgent care centers really do help thin out the congestion (and associated cost) in emergency rooms—especially in areas where there are multiple locations to choose from. A multistate study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows there’s a 1.4% increase in ED visits by privately insured patients when urgent care centers are …

Hackensack Meridian Health, the largest hospital chain in New Jersey, is merging with Carrier Clinic as the first step in staking a claim in an emerging urgent care “specialty.” Hackensack and Carrier, which specializes in treating patients with substance abuse and mental health issues, will open an urgent care facility specifically for patients with such concerns in Neptune, NJ. The aim will be to offer walk-in care for patients in crisis, largely in order to …

Regular readers of JUCM News know that hospitals have been buying or starting their own urgent care centers in greater numbers in recent years. It’s self-evident that they see it as a good business to enter, but a new article in the Wall Street Journal confirms the economic advantages of keeping patients in-house, instead of referring them out to urgent care centers or specialty practices outside of the hospital’s organization—as in, millions of dollars in …

It’s typical for healthcare providers who are licensed in one state to be permitted to treat patients only in that state. A new set of regulations could open to door to treating patients in multiple states, however—at least virtually. Currently, 24 states belong to the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which reduces barriers that prohibit providers from treating patients in multiple states if they’re only licensed in one. Physicians do have to apply and pay fees …

It’s not news that there’s a shortage of primary care physicians that is expected to affect both primary care and urgent care practices more and more in the coming years. It’s also well established that advanced practice practitioners (APPs)—nurse practitioners and physician assistants—are being called on to shoulder more of the work load in medical practices of every stripe. A physician-penned opinion piece recently published by The Hill asserts that trend is a viable solution …

On-site urgent care services have been growing in popularity in workplaces for some time, to the extent that occupational medicine is a substantial revenue stream for many urgent care businesses. Now some operators are seeing a similar opportunity in senior living communities. As noted in a recent entry on the Senior Housing News website, Christian Living Communities (CDC), which operates or manages assisted-living, memory care, and life plan communities in Colorado, Utah, and Missouri, brought …

The main focus of a new study just released by ECG Management Consultants may be physician compensation, but buried within the data is an interesting fact about the physician job market. Whereas between 64% and 100% of open physician positions took at least 6 months to fill in four out of five categories, depending on the specialty measured, only 20% of open positions went unfilled for that long in urgent care (the fifth category). ECG’s …

One of Alleghany Health Networks key hospitals saw more patients choose its urgent care centers over its emergency room for the first time ever last year. Saint Vincent Hospital has also seen a steady increase in visits to its primary care offices—again, at the expense of the ED. Saint Vincent President Chris Clark, DO told attendees of the hospital’s annual meeting that’s the outcome of efforts to “do more patient care outside the four walls …