Dive Brief:
- Urgent care centers, which cater to walk-in patients with the lure of faster service, are becoming an increasingly popular recourse for sick or hurt people looking for a quicker fix for health issues. However, their rapid growth has some calling for tighter regulations—including New York, by the state's public health council—and more transparency when it comes to communicating with patients about who is treating them.
- Industry experts say urgent care centers are not inspected as regularly as hospitals or surgery centers, which means patients looking to check out urgent care centers in their neighborhoods may have no means of finding updated safety records.
- The Urgent Care Association of America, which represents more than 6,000 professionals working in urgent care at more than 2,600 clinics in the US, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Mexico and New Zealand, according to its website, says additional regulation is unnecessary.
Dive Insight:
When it comes to who is treating patients, there should always be as much transparency as possible, and the issue of whether it's mandatory to have a supervising physician on site at primary-care and urgent-care facilities is one of the most hotly debated ones in medicine. So, is it OK to allow doctors to supervise remotely, off premises, or by e-mail? The answer depends on whom you ask.
One thing is clear: As physician assistants grow in numbers, they'll play a greater role in treating patients in all healthcare settings—not just urgent care.
But proponents of tougher regulations should also consider the possibility that having a supervisory physician overseeing operations could slow down the fast pace at which urgent care centers can operate, which could potentially do more harm than good, and prevent "urgent" care from being delivered when it's needed most.