Urgent Care options are exploding across the country. According to the Urgent Care Association of America’s 2010 Urgent Care Benchmarking Survey Results (2014’s are soon to be released and sure to be higher), there are 4,000-9,000 urgent care centers in America, which see, on average, 342 patient visits per week each. This means urgent care centers are serving between 71,136,000 and 160,056,000 patient visits each year.
This convenient alternative to expensive ER service is providing patients with cost effective care in their own neighborhoods. There a number of trends driving patients to urgent care locations:
- Patients want access to care where they want it, when they need it
- Health plans are encouraging patients to find less expensive options for immediate care needs
- Urgent care operations have become very good at providing ancillary services and enabling “one stop shopping” for patients
- Patients are assuming more responsibility for their health care and are choosing to receive episodic treatment in the most convenient way possible
Northwind supports the urgent care trend by providing a complete dispensing solution:
- Urgent care specific medications packaged in sizes typically prescribed in these acute settings
- Software that enables the urgent care clinic to quickly process prescription orders and have the patient on their way
- An ancillary revenue stream that drops significant margins directly to the bottom line WITHOUT increasing the cost to the patient
- The convenience of dispensing at the point-of-care which completely supports the easy access model of the urgent care clinic
- Easy inventory management and automated reordering which minimizes extra work associated with dispensing
