For the past several months, the urgent care industry has been abuzz with articles and commentary about how COVID-19 has reshaped visit volume and chief complaint mix across the country. Operators have watched COVID-19 testing nearly subsume their visit volume with barely a hint of traditional cold and flu visits that typically boom this time of year. There has also been a lot of talk about the influence of technology, particularly virtual technology, on traditional urgent care models....

The Urgent Care Quality Group (UCQG) is a group of urgent care chief medical officers and practice executives who have joined together to foster peer-to-peer dialogue that identifies the key issues of quality and patient safety in our industry and paves the way to actionable, meaningful improvements. ...

In the 1999 Star Wars film “The Phantom Menace” the legendary Jedi Master Yoda mentors young Anakin Skywalker with the now famous words, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”...

In April 2016, I wrote an article for our blog entitled “Tough Talk Around Walk-in Medicine” in which I listed the top-10 focal points for hospital-based urgent care operators. The article covered some of the typical challenges for hospitals who are trying to compete with more nimble private-equity-backed and private urgent care operators....

The scene is an emergency department (ED) at a large hospital in the Northeast. Providers and staff are going full out as patients flood the department. Over the loudspeaker, EMTs in transit with a patient announce the age, gender and condition. Another in-transit first responder team waits on hold in a queue that seems endless, one after another announcing a COVID-19 patient on the way. ...

We are entering a highly competitive and disruptive phase of the healthcare ecosystem. Over the next 10 years this new phase will be characterized by a battle for the “front door” of healthcare services between traditional health systems and new entrants. That battle will be waged over creating a new healthcare “experience” driven by seamless and frictionless technology, high-performing and highly engaged teams, and a radically changed payer environment....

Every year after our annual on-demand strategy symposium, we reflect on what transpired in the previous year and what appear to be the dominant trends in the year to come. This year’s 11th Annual Strategy Symposium was perhaps the most compelling evidence that we are entering some dynamic, if not transformative times in the on-demand world of healthcare....

No business is immune to ups and downs. And countless books have been written on companies that not only survive challenging times, but come through those times stronger, more nimble and ahead of their competitors....