News Release

Urgent care centers: Between the ER and the family doctor

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMC (BioMed Central)

Urgent care centers (UCCs) are providing an alternative to emergency room treatment. A study published in the open access journal BMC Health Services Research has shown that UCCs tend to be open well outside of office hours and offer a wider range of services than primary care offices.

Robin Weinick, from the RAND Corporation, worked with Steffanie Bristol and Catherine DesRoches from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School to investigate the organization and function of UCCs. Weinick said, "This is the first piece of research that's taken a nationally representative sample to look at urgent care centers. Given their extended hours, availability of unscheduled appointments, and the range of services they provide, urgent care centers are uniquely positioned within the health care system to address the overflow of acute care patients from primary care as well as low- to mid-acuity emergency department patients".

The researchers found that the centers employ significant numbers of family physicians, and are slightly larger on average than office-based practices nationally. They have hours of operation expanded significantly beyond typical office hours, while also providing services such as fracture care, suturing lacerations and x-rays, which are more commonly associated with the emergency department. The study was funded by the Urgent Care Association of America.

Weinick said, "A significant shortage of primary care physicians is predicted over the next two decades, and more than one quarter of family physicians are not currently accepting new Medicare fee-for-service patients. At the same time, despite having fewer emergency departments nationally, demand for their services continues to grow. Given this combination, demand for urgent care center services may increase as well".

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Notes to Editors

1. Urgent care centers in the U.S.: Findings from a national survey
Robin M. Weinick, Steffanie J. Bristol and Catherine M. DesRoches
BMC Health Services Research (in press)

During embargo, article available here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1292799592370723_article.pdf?random=950572
After the embargo, article available at journal website: http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmchealthservres/

Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.

Article citation and URL available on request at press@biomedcentral.com on the day of publication

2. BMC Health Services Research is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in all aspects of health services research, including delivery of care, management of health services, assessment of healthcare needs, measurement of outcomes, allocation of healthcare resources, evaluation of different health markets and health services organizations, international comparative analysis of health systems, health economics and the impact of health policies and regulations. BMC Health Services Research (ISSN 1472-6963) is indexed/tracked/covered by PubMed, MEDLINE, CAS, Scopus, EMBASE, Cinahl, Current Contents, Thomson Reuters (ISI) and Google Scholar.

3. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector.


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