Those of us in the on-demand medicine space all face a daunting challenge. Our industry attracts a mass market of consumers who have much higher expectations from their experience, the same expectations they have of retailers like Starbucks, Amazon or Target. We also face a crowded market of large and small players and much greater saturation, especially in urban and suburban markets.…

World-class AI diagnosis software merges with the nation’s premier healthcare consumerism consulting group. …

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.…

During the last six months I have been struck by how suddenly the economics, culture and technology underpinnings of healthcare are changing. These changes seem poised to disrupt the on-demand medicine landscape in a major way. …

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.…

Every year we gather input from multiple sources for our mid-year review of the on-demand medicine space: retail clinic openings and closings; urgent care openings and closings; indications from payers as our clients work on contract renewals; reports and speeches from sources we trust on urgent care deal activity; and the many articles that cover high-level topics such as the move from fee-for-service medicine to value-based care.…

Each year we typically use the discussion topics from our strategy symposium as a jumping-off point for this forecast issue. It turns out this approach tends to be fairly reliable and predictive in terms of the trends to expect, not only in the coming year but for two or three years.…

If you are reading this article you are probably an active participant in the on-demand healthcare industry. You probably also think 2017 turned out to be a ho-hum year: no blockbuster urgent care acquisitions like MedExpress…

No big announcements. Lots of smaller developments. That’s how most industry observers would characterize the state of the on-demand healthcare market in the first half of 2017. …

It seems like every year for the past five years, those of us watching the telemedicine industry say it’s about to take off. Indeed, we continue to see glimpses of momentum. On the technology front prices have come down and quality continues to improve.…