Until now, most urgent-care clinics have been run by retail operators, such as CVS or Walgreens. However, healthcare providers are seeing an opportunity in the “walk-in market” as a means for improving access to healthcare while also improving profits and easing the demand for healthcare services.
For some of the same reasons, hospitals and health systems are also increasingly considering building freestanding emergency rooms. The notion behind freestanding ERs is that such facilities can relieve long waits in hospital emergency departments as well as the demand for emergency physicians, according to the report. However, freestanding facilities and hospital emergency departments typically have comparable costs for the same services, according to the report.
Notable, the cost to be seen for an illness or injury at a freestanding or hospital emergency department could be four to six times more than the cost to be seen for those same conditions at a walk-in clinic, according to the report.
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