The business of health care is changing; faster than most of us would like. The Urgent Care sector is projected to grow to over $26 Billion per year by 2023. Between 2007 and 2016 the number of claim lines for Urgent Care grew by 1,725%. Interestingly from 2012 to 2017 the number of patients using non-face-to-face services grew by 600% and is expected to accelerate. You see the pattern(s)?

There are actually 2 primary takeaways from this data:

1) Urgent care is taking business from traditional brick-and-mortar care (remember this term from the dot com days?), yes, it is finally happening to medicine!

2) The non-face-to-face visit is growing even faster. I very purposefully use the term non-face-to-face rather than e-visit or telemedicine because the later 2 terms have a lot of reimbursement limitations that make them of very marginal value for the average practice. However, the non-face-to-face visit encompasses a number of CPT codes that can generate over $50,000 per month of additional revenue for each physician.

There is a lot of complexity here and we will dive deeper into that in subsequent posts, but suffice to say that to thrive in this new world you need to be thinking like a consumer business that has to meet its customers where they are and not where you might want them to be. – BUT do so in a way that increases your revenue and decreases the amount of work you are doing.

Stay tuned…