Urgent care centers taking heat off emergency rooms

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Rapid growth in urgent care centers in Springfield is helping to stabilize in emergency room traffic, according to local hospital officials. |ret||ret||tab|

Stephen Adams, director of urgent care at Cox Walnut Lawn, said in the last three years their traffic "has grown tremendously. We started with an average patient load of 30 to 40 (per day)." In February 2002, staff at the facility saw an average of 82 patients per day.|ret||ret||tab|

Susan Blackard, vice president over urgent care and corporate health at St. John's Health Systems, said that the boom in urgent care business has directly affected emergency rooms. |ret||ret||tab|

St. John's has been "seeing a real growth in the ER business, and what we're seeing (now) is it's not growing as fast," Blackard said. |ret||ret||tab|

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Accessibility, convenience|ret||ret||tab|

The popularity of urgent care centers is largely due to accessibility and convenience. Cox, St. John's and Doctor's Hospital each have urgent care centers, so patients can stay within their health insurance plan network.|ret||ret||tab|

Each of the hospitals staffs its urgent care center with physicians and nurses, and each is capable of stabilizing patients who come in with more serious problems and need to be transported by ambulance to an emergency room. But each facility has its own advantages.|ret||ret||tab|

Doctor's Hospital at 2828 N. National Ave. offers bedside admission. Rather than sitting at a desk answering questions and filling out insurance claim forms, patients are taken directly to a treatment room. Admissions personnel go to them for the necessary information.|ret||ret||tab|

Cox offers two urgent care facilities, one at Cox North, 1423 N. Jefferson Ave., and one at Walnut Lawn, 3535 S. National Ave. The latter is equipped with a full-service lab, radiology department and respiratory therapy department. They also feature monthly themes with decorations and give-aways, something that program director Judy Chambers says "makes us a little unique."|ret||ret||tab|

St. John's offers the most locations, with centers at 3231 S. National Ave., 1640 E. Kearney St., and in Branson and Monett. Its centers also keep a radiology technician and a lab technician on staff and can treat fractures and stitch wounds.|ret||ret||tab|

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Timely treatment|ret||ret||tab|

Above all, convenience seems to be the biggest factor in urgent care industry growth. Many people who might have visited an emergency room for minor injuries or illnesses now can receive faster care. Rather than the three- to five-hour wait while more critical patients are treated, urgent care facilities often can have patients in and out in less than an hour.|ret||ret||tab|

People with sore throats, colds, flu or minor injuries, who can't get an appointment with their regular doctors for several days or who don't want to wait, make up most of the urgent care patient load. Blackard said St. John's Urgent Care also sees kids who need last-minute exams for sports camps. |ret||ret||tab|

People who don't want to lose valuable work time on a doctor visit like the hours of urgent care centers. Cox's urgent care centers are open until 8 p.m.; St. John's centers are open until 10 p.m.; and Doctor's Hospital provides 24-hour care.|ret||ret||tab|

The costs are considerably less between 10 percent and 30 percent than a visit to the emergency room, though somewhat higher in some cases than a visit to the family doctor. |ret||ret||tab|

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Follow-up visits|ret||ret||tab|

The concern many health care professionals, including urgent care administrators, have is that convenience is taking the place of continuity of care and the preventive care patients can only receive from a primary care physician. |ret||ret||tab|

To promote that continuity, urgent care centers advise patients to follow up with their regular doctors and provide, at patient request, notification to their primary care physician of their visit, diagnosis and treatment.|ret||ret||tab|

But Blackard reported that approximately one-fourth of the patients they see in urgent care don't have a regular doctor.|ret||ret||tab|

That seems especially true of Medicaid patients. Paul Taylor, administrator and chief executive officer of Doctor's Hospital, said his staff "noticed that we were seeing a lot of Medicaid patients who were using the urgent care as their family doctor because they didn't have access to primary care elsewhere." In response, Taylor said, Doctor's Hospital began "a hospital-based clinic that exclusively sees Medicaid patients" in July 2001.|ret||ret||tab|

Another growing aspect of urgent care is worker's compensation patients. Blackard said that many companies are realizing they can cut down on lost productivity by taking advantage of the quick treatment available at urgent care facilities for ill or injured workers. |ret||ret||tab|

Concentra Health Centers (formerly Dr. Gil's), which has been an urgent care center and still treats some walk-in patients, now focuses primarily on workers' comp patients and no longer markets itself as a regular urgent care facility.|ret||ret||tab|

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