Are Growing Urgent Care Centers Helping or Hurting?

How long does it usually take you to get an appointment with your primary care doctor? For many patients interviewed in a recent New York Times article, the answer is far too long, driving them to opt for an urgent care center over the more traditional primary care physician. The result for many patients is short-term benefit and convenience, but with the possibility of long-term harm, including harm from medical negligence.

Over the last few years, the growth of urgent care centers in the U.S. has exploded, fueled especially by the pandemic. 2020 saw a 60% increase in urgent care visits over the previous year, and revenue for urgent care centers has increased 21% in the past four years. In a time where more people are seeking medical care and hospitals are filling up, urgent care centers filled the gap between emergency rooms and preventative care.

Hospital Visits Are a Growing Burden on Patients

The pandemic and its aftermath isn’t the only thing creating the need for more urgent care centers. For myriad reasons, it is becoming harder and harder for patients to get medical care in hospitals and ERs. As a result of physician burnout, reduced Medicare physician reimbursement, and increasing medical school debt, there is a shrinking pool of primary care doctors every year. For the doctors that are still practicing, there are increasing demands on their time, including more administrative responsibilities, keeping up with electronic medical records, and dealing with insurance companies.

Even when doctors are available, there are structural issues in the hospital system that make it difficult for patients to get needed care. These include inequities in healthcare access for patients, inability to do virtual appointments, scheduling inefficiencies, insufficient staff to answer phones, and high rates of “no-show” appointments.

Urgent Care Centers Offer a Faster Alternative

Overall, these factors result in a patient-physician relationship that has changed significantly over the past few decades and has many patients choosing urgent care instead. Patients interviewed by the New York Times cited the difficulty reaching their primary care doctor, the inability to get a same-day appointment, and the overcrowding in ERs as reasons they are turning to urgent care. In one of these urgent care facilities, a doctor might see 50 to 60 patients in a 12-hour shift, mostly with minor issues the physician can address and a few with major issues they can refer to the hospital.

Urgent Care Centers Create Opportunities for Medical Malpractice

In the short term, being able to get quicker access to medical care has been great. However, as explained in Dr. Fred Pelzman’s response to the Times article in MedPage Today, the increase in urgent care visits highlights significant issues within the medical system and opens the door to potential medical negligence.

Pelzman argues that it is great for patients to visit urgent care for minor problems that don’t require a hospital’s expertise, like a sprained ankle, but he worries about these centers sliding “down the slippery slope toward managing chronic problems like hypertension and diabetes.”

If patients are seeing their primary care doctor rarely – or not at all, in the case of some patients interviewed by the Times – they may have chronic illnesses that will go undiagnosed in an urgent care center, a place optimized for efficiency and one-time visits rather than in-depth or continuing care. Or, if the patient knows they have a chronic illness and visits urgent care for treatment, the center may not have the expertise or resources to properly treat the patient. These cases are, as Pelzman writes, “symptom[s] of all that is broken in healthcare” and create a real possibility for medical negligence and malpractice.

Contact Us for Assistance with Medical Negligence

At the Eisen Law Firm, we believe all patients deserve to get the care they need, whether for a minor issue at an urgent care center or for a chronic illness from their primary care physician. If you believe you or a loved one suffered from medical malpractice or negligence, please call us at 216-687-0900 or contact us online for a free initial consultation and case review with one of our experienced attorneys.