Source article: Becker’s Hospital Review – 61% of ED visits are emergent: 8 takeaways from Vizient’s scorecard report 

This article provides an overview of results from a report released by Vizient and Kaufman Hall – “System of CARE” report.  Visits were categorized as emergent or urgent using the SG2 CARE Grouper definitions.  While the majority of visits reported are indeed emergent (61%), the article doesn’t seem to call attention to the fact that 39% of the visits reported could potentially be addressed at a more appropriate healthcare setting, like an Urgent Care center!

According to the CDC it is estimated that 155 million patients visit the ED each year.  If 39% of those visits are urgent vs. emergent that is 60.45 million visits!  With over 15k Urgent Care centers across the United States (40% being owned by or affiliated with hospitals) it seems like the focus should be on how Urgent Care centers are perfectly positioned to address those urgent visits and help address the overcrowding of emergency departments.

As hundreds of hospitals are on the brink of bankruptcy their patients will lose access to care for their emergent visits. Urgent Care will continue to be there for those visits that are more urgent than emergent, but is this also an opportunity for UCs to increase the acuity of patients they treat?  I’m not saying they should handle truly emergent visits, but are there more complex urgent visits (that might currently be diverted to an ED) that could be handled at a UC?

Be sure and check out the complete article, linked above, for further details.