It’s been about 15 years of growth for urgent care centers in the United States, fueled by the ever-increasing use of the facilities by patients.
In a practical sense, the rise of urgent care centers takes the burden off of primary care physicians and overcrowded emergency centers, and reduces out-of-pocket costs for patients who truly do not have a condition that warrants a trip to the emergency room.
It’s hard on the emergency rooms, too, when a patient with a non-emergency condition walks in. With huge overhead costs, emergency rooms have a hard time justifying the expense it takes to treat an ear infection in a facility designed to handle life and death situations.
For patients, the ready access to care is a huge plus. They love that urgent care centers are open on evenings and weekends, whereas in a traditional physician practice this is not the case. In fact, many times patients will have to wait several days – even weeks – for an appointment with a primary care physician.
The Urgent Care Association of America reports 8,700 urgent care center members. An additional 700 to 800 facilities are opened each year, and there are currently over 20,000 physicians who practice urgent care medicine in the US today.
It seems that the days of having a family or primary care physician who coordinates all the medical care a patient receives in a traditional office-based environment are dwindling. Driven by a decline in employer-sponsored healthcare and the advent of two-income earning households, the American public is pressed for time and money. Urgent care centers allow for better scheduling and save patients money at the same time.
In response, many physicians are choosing the urgent care center as their business model of choice. For one, they don’t have to be on call 24 hours per day as they may be with an emergency room. Second, as more patients abandon primary care physicians for as-needed visits to urgent care centers, their money follows.
Conveniently, there are franchises available to enterprising physicians who do not want to reinvent the wheel when opening an urgent care center, and there has been a corresponding increase in the recognition of urgent care as a medical specialty. In fact, obtaining a Board Certification in Urgent Care Medicine is likely to increase your acceptance rates with many insurance carriers.
To add to the bottom line, many urgent care centers are now dispensing medications as well, which provides an additional revenue stream – in states where this is allowed.
The key question for physicians is: Are urgent care centers good investments? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. As with owning any business, you need to ask yourself if the market is large enough to sustain it. This will require regional calculations as to population and the number of existing urgent care centers.
However, in general, it seems that the public’s demand for lower cost care on their schedule will only grow in the coming years – no matter what happens with health insurance or the recent health care legislation. If you have a child with a high fever, for instance, you will most likely want to take them in to see a physician as soon as possible – even if it’s a Saturday or a weekday evening. In fact, if you’re trying to hold down a job in an uncertain economy, it’s preferable to delay the doctor visit until after work hours. Health care will never go away – only the method of delivery and payment will continue to change.
Overheard Thoughts