Becker’s Healthcare Podcast Healthcare Upside/Down: Pearls and Pitfalls for Integrated Urgent Care Strategies
Jul 14, 2025
Nick Zima, VP of Corporate Development at WellStreet Urgent Care, and Katie Fellin, Partner at ECG Management Consultants, delve into the booming urgent care industry. They discuss how patient expectations are driving changes, leading to the decline of emergency room visits. The duo highlights the financial hurdles providers face and the need for health system affiliations to improve services. Their insights reveal the importance of convenience and patient-centric strategies in shaping the future of urgent care.
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Drivers of Urgent Care Growth
- Urgent care growth is driven by decreasing loyalty to primary care and patient desire to avoid ER visits.
- Patients prefer urgent care centers affiliated with health systems for convenience and trust.
Urgent Care Cost-Effectiveness
- Urgent care reduces cost by offering lower acuity care at much less expense than ER visits.
- It fills a care gap, serving patients who demand timely, affordable access to treatment.
Urgent Care Reimbursement Challenges
- Payers focus reimbursement on the cost of basic care, neglecting patient experience improvements urgent care providers invest in.
- Urgent care is often treated as specialist care with lower incentives despite its crucial role in primary care continuum.