Practice Management
Urgent message: As hospitals and health systems develop and grow +their urgent care footprints, many leverage the expertise and experience of outside partners. Five common affiliation models fit differing strategic objectives and distinct market conditions. As the number of urgent care centers increases across the United States, so too do the variety of urgent care center models and the ways in which urgent care centers seek to meet the growing demand for urgent care. Gone are the …
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Urgent care operators who face competition from freestanding emergency rooms should emphasize cost differences compared with urgent care, and remind patients that vigilance may be needed to tell the difference between the two. Patients in Texas, for example, are finding that a new law requiring freestanding emergency rooms to post notices that fees may be comparable to a hospital emergency room doesn’t go far enough in preventing surprisingly big bills postcare. One problem: The nature …
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Nearly 2 million Americans have an opioid use disorder. While there are many causative factors behind that staggering number, Steven J. Stack, MD, president of the American Medical Association, says “the opioid epidemic…far too often has started from a prescription pad.” In an open letter to all physicians in every setting across the country, Stack proposed seven steps physicians can take to help reverse the tide: “Avoid initiating opioids for new patients with chronic noncancer …
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Patients, politicians, and insurers have been united in complaining that freestanding emergency rooms don’t offer sufficient transparency when it comes to billing practices, but that hasn’t stopped hedge-fund guru Steven Cohen from gobbling up 5% of First Choice Emergency Rooms parent company Adeptus Health. The backlash against freestanding ERs has coincided with a growing awareness that urgent care is a viable, more accessible, and less expensive option for many patients. A study by Anthem Blue …
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American CareSource Holdings, Inc., parent company of the GoNow Doctors urgent care and primary care chain, has entered into an arrangement with a real estate firm to develop up to 10 new locations over the next year. Harbert Realty Services will be the default real estate developer, broker, and construction manager for the new sites in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. Harbert will finance the upfront cost for the properties, including land acquisition and …
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Urgent care clinicians and owners are ratcheting up efforts to enlighten their potential patient base on the benefits and value of urgent care. Local media outlets have been awash recently in physician-penned articles explaining what presenting complaints can be managed in the urgent care setting vs those that truly need the resources of an emergency room. Now some operators are taking their message to the streets by conducting live patient education seminars. Case in point: …
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High deductibles may be keeping some patients from getting the care they really need—clearly a risk for them but also a possible impediment to healthcare reform in the U.S., according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Not mentioned is the fact that urgent care may offer a solution to at least one of those challenges by offering care whose cost is scaled to the appropriate acuity level. The study …
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Identifying and providing care for an underserved population may hold untold benefits for urgent care operators. In the case of Cliníca Médicos in Chattanooga, TN, that meant focusing on Spanish-speaking residents. Now the clinic is about to double in size just one year after opening its doors. The original mission was to offer healthcare services to area Latinos, regardless of insurance status. Patient volume has risen every month since, to the point that the clinic now …
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One of the retail health sector’s key selling points—convenience—may partially negate its perceived cost benefit vs urgent care or the emergency room. A new study published in Health Affairs reveals that use of retail clinics actually led to higher overall spending because patients were more inclined to seek professional care for complaints so minor that they could have been treated at home. The data, which reflect claims data from Aetna, indicate that 58% of retail …
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Some healthcare facilities may view urgent care as the competition, but there’s mutual benefit to establishing complementary relationships among local providers and settings, not to mention patients and employers. That’s the message Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity will impart in a one-hour webinar to be hosted by the Urgent Care Association (UCA) on Thursday, March 24, at 1 p.m., Central time. An active referral network benefits not only both healthcare facilities, but patients …
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