Oh, The Worried Well

As Archie one said, ‘why do they always give me a shot where the pain ain’t…?’

It was classic Bunker, worried, agitated and usually offensive. I wonder what he’d make of all the changes in healthcare – urgent care clinics, for one, are more often than not staffed by allied health providers. Bunker only wanted ‘regular doctors’ as he called them and, even though he didn’t know it, he had a bit of managed care in him. ‘Do I really need this um needle?’ he would argue. If there’s one delivery model set to face some turbulence between now and 2025 it may just be urgent care. Even though it has found an important niche in the health system, the advent of more front-line tele models and nurse hotlines and apps will likely continue to be a volume diverter that hurts these retail clinic models at least those in competitive, saturated markets. ‘They absolutely have a place but when we start seeing the ambulance show up every hour to take patients to the hospital, that’s a big flag for me,’ says Valerie Andrews, a network manager who just moved into the Connecticut market. ‘My sense is 20-40% of cases would self resolve too, so there’s a value question here.’ The ones able to use data and use their clinic to do urgent and follow up care, to identify and change behavior and ‘have a PCP traffic cop mentality,’ they have sustainability.