How Urgent Care is Becoming More Corporatized

How Urgent Care is Becoming More Corporatized

In 2023, the urgent care industry added 1,057 de novo locations—new sites that did not previously exist. But these new centers are far more likely to be owned by larger entities with 10 or more units, also called “enterprise” operators.  In fact, according to data from National Urgent Care Realty analyzed by Experity, for the past 4 years, 10+ unit operators have been the drivers of new rooftop growth. Prior to 2020, the industry was led …

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Robust Urgent Care De Novo Growth Continues

Robust Urgent Care De Novo Growth Continues

The urgent care industry continues to add de novo centers, according to data from Experity and National Urgent Care Realty. Although de novo growth slowed in 2023 by 5%, 2023 de novos are still 16% higher than 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. In addition to continued overall growth of the industry, the data indicates structural changes in who is opening de novos. A “de novo” urgent care refers to a center that did not previously …

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Flu Season Begins For Urgent Care

Flu Season Begins For Urgent Care

In late November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted that the number of healthcare visits related to influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was particularly high among children, causing concern in communities about this “tripledemic” of respiratory illness. According to Experity data, the first week of October ushered in flu season for urgent care, when positivity rates for the three viruses among all urgent care center visits began to rise.1 Since …

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Urgent Care Scope of Services

Urgent Care Scope of Services

Same-day ambulatory healthcare services are the hallmark of urgent care (UC). Because UC clinicians care for a wide range of conditions and injuries, they need to be proficient in a broad scope of immediate intervention services. In its latest white paper, the Urgent Care Association (UCA) noted that more organizations are moving to a staffing model with nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) serving as the primary providers on-site, rather than physicians. This model grew …

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Center Locations Double, Driven by Big Consumer Trends

Across the hills and valleys of healthcare, the rising power of the consumer has reshaped the landscape more than any other market shift in recent memory. Patient preferences are fueling demand for everything from virtual care to retail-store clinics. For urgent care, the innovations represent thrilling opportunity alongside equal measures of competition. The ratio of wins to losses will vary by market. Yet even with the large-scale disruption, urgent care has grown with intention, both …

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In-Office Dispensing: The Good, the Bad, and the Unlikely

In-Office Dispensing: The Good, the Bad, and the Unlikely

On paper (so to speak), in-office prescribing in the urgent care center would seem to be a no-brainer for all concerned: patients could avoid the time-consuming hassles of navigating the retail drugstore morass and head straight home with their medication, and providers could be assured that their patients got the right medication in a timely manner and could be the responsible parties to answer any questions they may have—all while collecting a modest profit.  That’s …

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There’s No Casual Approach to Improving Antibiotic Stewardship—but When You Make the Effort, It Works

There’s No Casual Approach to Improving Antibiotic Stewardship—but When You Make the Effort, It Works

Improving antibiotic stewardship was an industry-wide mandate even before a 2018 study indicated that urgent care appeared to be more likely than other settings to overprescribe for common infections. While the methodologies could be questioned, especially in their take on the nature of urgent care visits, the point was well taken. Since then, urgent care as a whole has sought to improve providers’ prescribing habits more aggressively than ever. The initial awareness campaigns did a …

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That Notion That Urgent Care Centers Help Volume in the ED? It’s True

That Notion That Urgent Care Centers Help Volume in the ED? It’s True

One of the key “selling” points of urgent care has always been that if patients who don’t have limb- or life-threatening concerns are able to get acute care someplace other than the emergency room, they would go there, thereby lowering cost, wait times, and risk associated with the ED. Now there’s evidence to support the first part of this premise, thanks to a new report from Mesirow Investment Banking. As seen in the graph below, …

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The 10-Year Trend on UC Claim Lines Is Strong—in the City and in the Country

The 10-Year Trend on UC Claim Lines Is Strong—in the City and in the Country

Click Here to download the PDF. Believe it or not, just a decade ago urgent care accounted for barely 6% of all claim lines in the United States. There was little difference between rural and urban settings, too. New research from FAIR Health1 shows that the picture changed dramatically in 2015, though, as the percentage of claim lines attributed to urgent care jumped nearly 5% in a single year and rural claims started to outpace …

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