Practice Management
Walgreens has launched a new “digital marketplace” designed to guide patients to the best care setting (out of the 17 partners they’re working with, at least) for whatever their symptoms might be. The idea is to simplify the process of deciding whether an urgent care center, hospital emergency room, specialty provider—or a Walgreens health provider, of course—will be best suited to offer the patient the right level of care. Physician house calls are also possible …
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It’s too late to be truly unprecedented, but Cigna’s announcement that it plans to buy Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefit management company in the U.S., signals that lines between “traditional” segments of the healthcare industry will continue to be breached for the foreseeable future. Once the deal is done, the combined company will reside in Cigna’s Connecticut headquarters, headed by Cigna CEO David Cordani. The Express Scripts unit will still be based in St. …
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Though they’ll need to acquire additional licensure before they can start shipping prescription drugs to customers, Amazon has been licensed as a wholesale pharmacy distributor in 12 states. Regulators in Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, and Tennessee have all given their blessing. Obviously, this has raised conjecture that the virtual retail giant has big plans to make a name for itself in healthcare delivery. Analysts say …
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Five Star Urgent Care, which currently operates 17 urgent care locations, is opening 18 more in New York and Ohio after already converting an existing primary practice to an urgent care center. The company is ironing out leases for the rest, and expects to complete the growth spurt by late 2018. The company has found the areas in which the new centers will be located to be underserved by healthcare providers in general. The move …
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Some of the masterminds behind Uber, Trulia, and OpenTable have set their sights on the urgent care marketplace—not to start operating clinics, but by facilitating patient visits. Solv launched recently with an aim to make “booking” urgent care time in a way similar to how diners use OpenTable to book tables in a restaurant. The company, led by former Trulia executives Heather Mirjahangir Fernandez and Daniele Farnedi, got $6.25 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, …
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The urgent care industry has gone from upstart to “an established segment of the U.S. healthcare industry,” according to a new report from Kalorama Information, which put the overall value of the market at $15 billion. Even better, Kalorama predicts it will continue to grow annually through at least 2021. Over that time, cold, flu, and sore throat will continue to be the primary complaints that drive patients to seek urgent care, followed by lacerations, …
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South Florida-based MD Now plans to nearly double the growth pace it set in 2016 by opening seven new locations this year. The company has set its course based on both population access and expansion of services. The 25 locations it already has are within 5 miles of 75% of residents in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. Its new centers will be located and built with an eye toward offering more occupational health and …
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Family medicine has a long way to go in supporting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ goal of tying fully half of traditional fee-for-service Medicare payments to value-based payment models by 2018, if a new survey from the American Academy of Family Medicine is any indication. Urgent care typically operates on a parallel, fee-for-service model, but the evolution of how other practice environments come to terms with the changing dynamics of the healthcare …
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