What is urgent care medical serices?

Vanity | Self

[ProudFossil]

What is the purpose of all the urgent care centers in the urban areas, specifically Albuquerque, New Mexic?

[ProudFossil]

At least a few years back, the Urgent Care Center (this is different from the ER) at Northside Presbyterian Hospital was open 24x365. A quick Google indicates that this is still the case.

This is NOT TRUE. I Googled Northside Presbyterian Hospital and the hours of the urgent care facility there are: Hours: Mon - Fri: 7 am - 6 pm Sat - Sun: 7 am - 4 pm Holidays*: 7 am - 4 pm

That is quite a far cry from 24/365. Where are you getting your information from?

[ProudFossil]

FWIW, Obamacare (ACA) has plenty of problems, but it has increased availability of "urgent care centers", as it has increased their insured customer base.

It has NOT increased availability of "urgent care centers" here in Albuquerque. It has decreased the hours available from 24 a day to just 9 or 10. That is a decrease of over 50%. So please do not spout your liberal propaganda to me.

[ProudFossil]

That is only for the urgent care clinic associated with Presbyterian Health Services (PHS) I think that is what PHS stands for.

And PHS is Presbyterian Hospital group, including clinics, hospitals, etc. At least here in New Mexico. I checked the urgent care facilities associated with the Loveless Hospital group. They are also having limited hours.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Check with the urgent care centers to see what their policies are - you can walk in without any referral in our town - best thing going - no need to wait to see the family doctor for three days for something to help a bad cold or backache - you’re on the way to being better by the time you’d be getting in to see your regular doc....

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

They are designed to be a practical and cheap alternative to the ER. I was at one today, AAMOF. My illnesses always seem to fall on the weekend (or maybe I wait till the weekend because I’m too stubborn to go during the week - not sure which. My regular family practitioner is not in on the weekend, but the Urgent Care is. I usually have to wait an hour or more after my appointment time before I see my regular doctor - at Urgent Care I was in and out in 30 minutes. I pay the same copay for a visit there, and they will tell me to see my family doctor if it’s anything that relates to my long-term conditions (which they have on file). Great place to go for off-hours emergencies and for treatment for flu or for injuries and infections - Glad someone thought of it and filled a niche in the hierarchy of family medical care.

[Svartalfiar]

She told the nurse she would then go to a local urgent care facility to have it treated, primarily for infection and possible sutures. She was told she would need a referral from her doctor before she could go to any urgent care facility.

No, the nurse is wrong. Urgent care facilities will accept walk-ins, in fact, that's their main mode of business. Sounds like your DiL's doctor just didn't want her to try going to it. Did she even try calling the closest urgent care to ask the actual place?

[DesertRhino]

You don’t need a referral in Albuquerque New Mexico to walk into an urgent care. That was poor advice.

[boop]

I've been an urgent care doctor for 17 years. Our hours are 8a-8p 7 days a week.

We are there to take care of you when your regular doc can't squeeze you in. (They have regular hours, rarely work weekends, and literally cannot take all comers.)

That's where we come in.

We also serve a lot of out of towners who get sick on their trips and are nowhere near their family doc.

I worked today and my last two patients came in at 7pm.

One had a deep laceration that wouldn't stop bleeding, so I sutured and dressed the wound. Another man fell down some steps at home and landed squarely on his toes.

He had a severely painful fracture of his big toe.

I treated him, got him in a temporary cast and referred him to orthopedics.

He'll be comfortable until then, instead of suffering for days until seen by his primary.

Both were happy, and prevented a very expensive ER visit.

We take that "pressure" off the local ER, so they can take of more serious cases.

Win-win for everyone involved.

[trebb]

Did you actually attempt to use an Urgent Care facility or just take the lady at her word?

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Interesting that the availability of after-hours urgent care is declining in ABQ, that's the opposite of national trends:

https://docutap.com/blog/trends-to-watch-in-urgent-care-in-2016

_______________

As for the ACA and Urgent Care, it's just a fact that the increase in insured patients - especially in states that expanded Medicaid - has created significant additional demand for immediate access treatment options, and that it's a major driver of the rapid ongoing expansion of such services.

http://aaucm.org/news/newsdetail.aspx?mobi=0&a=9130

In most areas local networks are all aggressively recruiting ACA patients for UCC visits, for example both UUCs and ACA acceptance is at the top of the home page for my provider network:

http://www.northshore.org/

And UCCs are increasingly niched right into networks, the reception desk at my PCP's practice has a handout listing the hours of the networks UCCs - they are an explicit, intermediate option between a scheduled visit to the practice and an ER level emergency.

______________________________

You have got me wrong: I'm in favor of competitive market solutions, I think that people ought to have a wide range of options and that competition improves the options available.

But the costs of the current system are just out of control.

And that's causing politicians - virtually all politicians - to promise two completely contradictory things: that their policies will allow us to retain some of the the worst aspects of our current fabulously expensive and inefficient system (or, often, an idealized version of the system circa 1980) and that their policies will structure things so as to provide most Americans with affordable health case.

And you just cannot do both of those things.

In the meantime, while the politicians on both the left and right argue about unrealistic and impractical "reforms", market forces are creating seismic level changes throughout the industry, of which the greatest is rapid concentration of provider networks into a few major players (or less) within each market.

And this in turn is what's gong to drive the actual form of health insurance - far more than political opinion.

For example, take the idea that selling insurance across state lines will lead to increased competition and lower prices.

The problem with this is that you can't just open a sales office (or put up a web page) in a new market and sell insurance - even if you are already doing so successfully in some other market.

Because you have to have something to sell.

And that something is a complex provider network - which you will now attempt to assemble in competition with existing networks.

It's a chicken or an egg problem: you can't afford to assemble a network unless you can attract plan participants, and you can't attract participants until you assemble a network.

And in the meantime, you are competing with existing plans which are already enjoying the economies of scale of being an existing network.

So this is where we are going to end up in a decade or so: in most markets most health care will be provided by a handful of highly integrated provider networks.

Does not matter if your insurance is via employment, subsidized private insurance, traditional or premium support Medicare, Medicaid or you pay for it out of pocket; most Americans will be receiving care via a privately owned vertically integrated provider network.

And once you start dealing with the political power of those behemoths, that, far more than ideology, determines what the US systems looks like.

[Tax-chick]

We use Urgent Care often for kids who are throwing up, cases of pinkeye, injuries that require more care than Boy Scout first aid, and camp/sports physicals. Our local “corner clinic” is very good, no referral required, files our insurance because it’s part of one of our two major hospital networks.

However, my mother, in central Florida, ran into some that didn’t see patients without a physician referral. She had to take my father to the hospital ER for after-hours issues.

[PapaBear3625]

On Friday she went to her primary care physician's office but there were no doctors present. She told the nurse she would then go to a local urgent care facility to have it treated, primarily for infection and possible sutures. She was told she would need a referral from her doctor before she could go to any urgent care facility.

More likely it's a rule of the medical insurance, as a condition for their covering the visit. In other words, if you want your insurance plan to cover it, you need a referral. My insurance plan covers going to urgent care without needing a referral, but with a $50 co-pay.

[PJBankard]

Really? The couple I have seen are open all night.

[Tax-chick]

The one near me used to be open 7:00 a.m. - 9 p.m., or something like that, but changed to 24/7 a few years ago. I remember when Vlad had the croup, I had to wait until they opened to take him in, couldn’t do it during the night.