Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Freestanding ERs Leave Lower-Income Patients in Need of Other Options

If it seems like freestanding emergency rooms are popping up everywhere, try driving through a less-tony zip code. Researchers from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found growth of the ERs is concentrated in high-income areas with growing populations, more traditional ERs, a higher proportion of privately insured patients and a lower proportion of Medicaid beneficiaries. That leaves lower-income patients who need immediate care stuck waiting in the hospital emergency room, even if their complaints are …

Inaccurate Provider Lists a Major Barrier to Care, Study Finds

The first stop for many patients in search of a physician is their health plan’s provider directory. If a new study published in Health Affairs is any indication, though, they might be better off consulting Google—or even the yellow pages—to find their closes urgent care center for prompt attention. The problem is that directories are often inaccurate, with roughly 30% of callers discovering the physician has a specialty other than the one listed in the …

More Data Show Freestanding ERs Cost More Than Urgent Care

Insurers and other parties who hold a stake in the economics of urgent care tend to respond to cold hard data. Here’s some: Seven of the top 10 reasons patients sought care in a freestanding emergency room in 2014 could have been treated safely—but much less expensively—in an urgent care center, according to a new study by the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC). Take sore throat, which topped the list of reasons …

Make Allies, Not Rivals, of Other Healthcare Providers

Some national provider organizations have, at times, been downright vehement in opposing the growth of urgent care. The common “complaint” seems to be that allowing patients to receive care without an appointment threatens the well-founded idea of the medical home. On the other hand—as industry insiders and patients know—urgent care provides necessary care at the time it’s needed most. If you want to build up relationships with local providers instead of defensively fending off misperceptions, …

CDC: One Out of Five Visit a U.S. Emergency Room Every Year

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that one out of every five Americans visits a hospital emergency room at least once a year, with California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas accounting for more than a third of all ED visits nationally. The report also reconfirms that most of these patients are adults who are not admitted to the hospital. Of interest to urgent care operators, the national rate for …

Intermountain Healthcare Joins the Telehealth Revolution

Add Intermountain Healthcare to the growing list of large healthcare providers that offer patients the chance to connect with a physician from the comfort of their own phone. IHC’s Connect Care will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and charge a flat fee of $49. Patients who the provider thinks need to be seen right away will get a referral and not be charged for the virtual visit. IHC operates 31 …

Urgent Care Physicians See Demand—and Salaries—Skyrocket

The laws of supply-and-demand have taken a liking to physicians just entering the work force—and the bounty seems especially rich in urgent care. We told you recently that physician shortages have some states offering incentives to draw newly minted docs to their neighborhoods. Now the 2016 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives reveals that “starting salaries for both primary care and specialist physicians spiked in the last 12 months.” Of particular interest, urgent …

AFC Doctors Express Goes All-In on Urgent Care Branding

American Family Care is putting all its clinics in the proverbial urgent care basket; the company’s 160+ locations, currently flying the AFC Doctors Express banner, will be rebranded under the name AFC Urgent Care. A new logo will come along with the name, but the locations will retain the same doctors and other staff, offer the same hours, accept the same insurance plans, and maintain current copays. Each will also continue to operate under local …

Are Insurers Punishing Providers for Being Out-of-Network?

A community hospital in California says Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia is punishing it for being out-of-network by paying patients directly for emergency services received at the hospital, rather than reimbursing the hospital. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital is taking the matter to court, charging that the Georgia BCBS plan is trying to pressure the hospital, unfairly, to accept its contract rates. The suit further claims that by paying patients directly, the …

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