Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/912958
34 Executive Briefing Sponsored by: Health System Growth Using Urgent Care P atients are demanding care be delivered how and when they want it. In the primary care setting, traditional, scheduled clinics are finding it hard to adapt. Instead of building delivery models around patient demands, most traditional clinics are built around the provider schedules and the direct clinical needs of the patient. In these models, convenience has taken a back seat. As a result, many healthy, well-insured individuals are largely unsatisfied with their primary care relationship and actively seeking primary care alternatives like urgent care. These "unattached," typically younger, more financially well-off and healthier individuals, are changing how they interact with the healthcare system. Individuals are shifting from desiring convenience to requiring it. Shaped by their experiences in banking, airlines and retail industries, individuals expect the same level of access, convenience and service from their healthcare providers. Health systems that want relationships with these unattached individuals must be willing to meet them where they are along their healthcare journey. Regardless of the clinical enterprise's desire to connect everyone with a long-term physician relationship, responsive health systems will recognize they cannot form relationships through experiences that leave individuals unsatisfied. These relationships are particularly important at the individual's first point of contact with the healthcare system. The first healthcare touch points have unique influence. Studies continue to show that once an individual interacts with a provider, the vast majority will follow that provider's near-term clinical advice. In a competitive environment, whoever controls the first touch points will be able to best influence patients' secondary decisions and thereby help guide patients into a particular health system. Historically, the first touch points have been either a physician office or an emergency room. As health systems have sought to influence patients' healthcare decisions, strong primary care physician enterprises are developing. However, the demands for convenience mean an ever-growing portion of first touch points are happening in other channels like urgent care. Urgent care is a large (approximately 19 percent) and rapidly growing (6-10 percent per year) component of primary healthcare. Scheduled primary care is still growing, but only at a fraction of the rate of the urgent care channel. Because urgent care is growing at four times the rate of scheduled clinics, the share of the primary care visits over 10 years is expected to shift dramatically. The urgent care channel today is largely controlled by private physicians, investors and urgent care companies. Over the next several years, health systems will develop the urgent care platform as they did with their scheduled primary care investments. The Urgent Care Market Many health systems ask if there are unmet needs in their communities. In the case of urgent care, the unmet need is typically access to convenient care. In early 2017, a strategy company, Health System Advisors, commissioned a study of the current national urgent care utilization and unmet demand. What they found was striking: With the recent rise of urgent care development, there is an estimated 22 percent unmet need for urgent care in markets where urgent care sites could be financially viable. The unmet demand is so large that approximately 1,600 new urgent care sites can be supported generating nearly $3.5 billion in revenue.