Sixty-nine percent of U.S. healthcare consumers said they would rather use an urgent care clinic affiliated with their own health system than an independent one, but only 43% have actually done so in the past two years, according to a new Monigle report.
The brand consultancy survey of 1,014 nationally balanced U.S. healthcare consumers in July found awareness lags well behind preference: only 59% of respondents believe their own health system offers urgent care at all, compared to 89% who believe it offers primary care.
Part of the gap reflects market reality. Roughly 61% of the country’s 14,245 urgent care centers are unaffiliated with any hospital or health system, meaning the nearest and most visible option for many consumers isn’t the one their health system operates.
Awareness held steady across generations, ranging from 57% among Gen Z to 63% among Boomers. But loyalty proved more conditional among younger consumers: 64% of millennials said they would choose a better-performing independent urgent care over an affiliated one, compared to 15% of Boomers, and 66% of millennials said they’d switch healthcare providers entirely for easier access, compared to 25% of Boomers.
The report urges health systems to make urgent care locations easier to find and to design clearer handoffs between urgent care and primary care, arguing that the “handoff” between entry points functions as its own product in a landscape where consumers increasingly move between digital and physical access points.
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