Few Misused Rx Drugs Prescribed in Urgent Care

Few Misused Rx Drugs Prescribed in Urgent Care

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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NPS Predicts Success in UC

NPS Predicts Success in UC

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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Patient Arrival Times In Urgent Care

Patient Arrival Times In Urgent Care

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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Categorization of Codes Most Frequently Used in Urgent Care

Categorization of Codes Most Frequently Used in Urgent Care

International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes—maintained by the World Health Organization and published in the United States by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—standardize the categorization and reporting of patient diagnoses. Currently, U.S. healthcare operators use the ICD-10 edition. The analysis above examines 2023 urgent care visits logged by users of Experity’s electronic medical record, revealing that 28,686 diagnosis codes were documented in urgent care patient medical records.    While it’s logical to conclude …

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Prescription Duration for Urgent Care Patients

Prescription Duration for Urgent Care Patients

Whereas primary care is focused on prevention and management of chronic conditions, urgent care has historically been defined as episodic treatment for non-acute or acutely rising conditions—which are not medical emergencies but generally call for evaluation within 24 hours. As such, it would be expected that urgent care providers would prescribe medications only for the duration of a current infection or until a patient can follow-up with a specialist or primary care physician, for example. …

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Urgent Care De Novo Growth by Operator Size, 2022-2023

Urgent Care De Novo Growth by Operator Size, 2022-2023

A compilation of 2022 and 2023 de novo urgent care center data shows a 7% decline in new locations: from 1,651 de novo centers in 2022 to 1,540 in 2023. A “de novo” center is a new urgent care location where services were not offered previously. The unit of measure is the physical site, meaning if an existing location already in operation happened to change ownership, such change is not counted as de novo growth. …

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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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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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