Changes are likely coming to how urgent care is regulated, which could lead to advantages for hospitals and health systems looking to enter into the space.
These changes and more were discussed during a Feb. 7 webinar, hosted by McGuireWoods. The webinar featured several experts, including Mike Cicero, a partner with Cicero Associates; Gordon A. Maner, president and head of investment banking for AMB Investment Banking; P. Joanne Ray, CEO of Urgent Care Association of America; and Geoffrey C. Cockrell, JD, and Barton C. Walker, JD, partners with McGuireWoods.
The urgent care space is rapidly growing, thanks to two main reasons, according to Mr. Maner: decreasing access to care, due to factors like the physician shortage and overcrowded emergency departments, and increasing healthcare costs.
"The market for urgent care is expected to remain attractive for the foreseeable future as healthcare systems and managed care organizations try to bring accountable care to their delivery models. They'll continue to seek partnership and alignment strategies with urgent and primary care providers," Mr. Maner said.
The popularity of urgent care has also brought about more oversight and regulation, Mr. Maner added.
One state moving in that direction is New York, which the experts called a "bellwether" state. New York has taken major steps to regulate ambulatory care and urgent care more heavily recently. One of the reasons the state started looking into more regulations was to "create conditions for fair competition in the market," Mr. Cicero said.
There are several proposed changes in New York regulations regarding urgent care, including disclosures to consumers, electronic medical record use, accreditation and referral and staffing pattern policies. Further changes were discussed, according to Ms. Ray, but did not end up in the final recommendations, such as requiring all urgent care centers to take Medicaid or restricting the number of return patient visits.
As states like New York, begin to take a closer look at how urgent care is regulated, it could open up opportunities for hospitals and health systems to partner with urgent care providers.
"I think that this is certainly advantageous to [hospitals or health systems]. Any time, in my opinion, when you can implement a higher barrier on a fairly entrepreneurial and low barrier to entry business model like urgent care…seems as though it's going to drive…entrepreneurs to want to partner with big brother in the market to help them get through some of the standardization, accreditation and regulatory potential changes," Mr. Maner said.
Find more information on future McGuireWoods webinars here.