Friday, August 28, 2015
Urgent Care
There are 168 hours in a week and illness or injury can
strike during any one of them – not only in the 40-plus hours that physician
offices are open for business.
There being no practical way for individual physicians to
plan efficiently for the unplanned needs of their patients, they tend to fill
their schedules ahead of time.
One result of scientific and technological advances is that
a large and increasing portion of medical care can be adequately provided by
people who are not physicians.
In light of all that, one might expect that the health care
establishment would have some time ago made convenient provision for patients
seeking out-of-hours care, much of which falls short of emergency status. But physicians in private practice would have
seen that as competition and so it didn’t happen.
There being no alternative, patients got their out-of-hours
care from hospital emergency rooms. The specter
of competition prevented hospitals from making the service attractive. Hours of waiting for service became common
but patients in droves sought it anyway.
As the health care economy grew, investors saw an
opportunity and urgent care chains were developed and drug store chains began
to offer health care services that could properly be offered by nurses.
Hospitals are finally beginning to become interested. Partners Health Care, the Boston Hospital
behemoth, has announced that it will begin opening urgent care centers
throughout the Boston area.
When Partners moves, everyone pays attention. So it seems that hospitals are finally
responding to a need that they should have filled a long time ago.
