Urgent care centers boost spending on low-acuity visits, study finds

Becker's Healthcare April 12, 2021
Alia Paavola

Although urgent care centers deter some lower-acuity patients from a costly emergency department visit, they are not associated with a drop in total healthcare spending, according to a study published in Health Affairs in April.

For the study, researchers used insurance claims and enrollment data from 2008 to 2019 from a managed care plan to understand if the presence of an urgent care center substantially decreased lower-acuity ED visits.

The authors found that the entry of an urgent care center into a ZIP code deterred lower-acuity ED visits, but the effect was small.

The study found that the reduction of just one lower-acuity ED visit was associated with 37 additional...

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