Hospitals trying to ease strained emergency rooms (ERs) and to overcome a lack of primary care physicians are embracing urgent care centers, report Kaiser Health News and USA Today. They increasingly are adding urgent care centers, hoping to boost admissions and rein in the costs of delivering care.
"A lot of people don't have regular doctors and so this is a way of getting them into our system," John Anderson, the chief medical officer at Duke Primary Care in North Carolina, told KHN. The health system already has added five urgent care centers, which it will use to serve as a medical home for patients.
Urgent care clinics are nothing new; almost 3 million patients visit such facilities every week, and the number of clinics jumped from 8,000 in 2008 to more than 9,200 in 2011, according to the Urgent Care Association of America.
Although most facilities are run by hospitals or doctors, Humana led health payers' move into urgent care when it bought Concentra, giving the insurer more than 300 medical centers in 42 states.
But as the industry tries to deliver more accountable care, some doctors say urgent care centers could prevent care coordination, leaving patients without a regular physician. "One of the best predictors of health outcomes is having a usual source of care where you can go for acute and chronic illnesses and develop a relationship with a doctor," said American Academy of Family Physicians President Dr. Glen Stream.
If hospitals can't get docs on board with the urgent care movement, they can try other tested (and successful) attempts to avoid overcrowding and related care issues, such scheduling more patients for mid-week and weekend admissions, offering freestanding EDs, or opening an after-hours medical clinic.
To learn more:
- read the KHN/USA Today article