Patients Are Thronging Urgent Care Centers. Can Physicians Manage ?

Are Your Patients Waiting Forever To Meet You ? 

Urgent care centers are sprouting all across the country. Recent studies indicate that urgent care centers have doubled over the last couple of years. As the healthcare industry undergoes major changes, cost cutting seems to be the new mantra.

Everybody is urging everybody else to cut down on costs. The latest to join the list are patients. Insurers are now insisting that patients explore more affordable options. Rushing to the ED for relatively minor ailments is not an option anymore. And patients are instead making a beeline to urgent care centers to reduce costs.

Is The Decline Of Primary Care Facilities A Reason ?

 Every healthcare news article in recent times has moaned the death of primary care centers. The shortage of primary care doctors only worsens by the day. The United States is reportedly short of over 9000 primary care doctors. By 2025 there will be a massive shortage of about 65,000 primary care doctors.

Urgent care centers offer the same medical services that primary care centers provide for acute care patients. This has led to a sharp increase in the demand for urgent care physicians.

40 Million Newly Insured Patients A Huge Driver !

There are going to be startlingly more patients waiting to meet the doc. The boom in urgent care centers can help thousands of patients meet their doctor on time. Hospitals are stepping up the plate to cash in on the demand for urgent care billing services. A lot many doctors have also started urgent care practices to cater to the huge influx of patients.

Too Much Of A Good Thing…

As the old maxim goes, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Physicians can, buoyed by the popularity of urgent care, bite of more than they can chew, inadvertently. Medical practitioners need to redesign their practices to handle patient demand.

Here is what urgent care centers can do to handle patient load :

• Leverage physician extenders: Nurse practitioners can give tired doctors the respite they need. Instead of being at loggerheads with NPs, physicians need to work closer with urgent care NPs and leverage their potential, to ensure better patient care.
• Have a smart patient portal: Patient portals can help automate tasks that will otherwise need an army of professionals to handle. Appointment scheduling, eligibility verification and most other front desk tasks can be automated to avoid long wait queues and flustered front office tasks.
• Outsourcing billing and coding needs: More patients mean more claims to be transacted. Ass your claim traffic increases you’d need additional staff to manage huge billing volumes. You’d have to invest more on infrastructure and operational costs. Outsourcing can help urgent care centers contain costs and yet manage the vast number of patients waiting to be seen !