The Expansion of Urgent Care to Fix Healthcare in America

While Obamacare sought to improve so many of the issues plaguing healthcare in America, it also played a part in making the problem worse and more complex. Health insurance premiums rose, making the monthly fees for health insurance an extravagance for so many people. The Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index showed that 11.7% of Americans did not have health insurance as of the second quarter of this year, which is a 0.8% increase from the last quarter of 2016: this means that 2 million Americans appear to have dropped their coverage during this interim (Backman, 2017). This comes as no surprise, since health insurance was becoming more and more expensive: “…premiums rose significantly across the board this year for those who don't qualify for federal subsidies, and many folks just couldn't afford them. Furthermore, a large number of insurers pulled out of the open exchange, leaving consumers with a narrower range of choices for coverage” (Backman, 2017). Given how complex and tense the healthcare playing field has become, and not to mention how riddled with uncertainty it generally is, many people have given up paying expensive premiums of their own accord, deciding to put money aside in case of accidents or medical emergencies.
There needs to be a program in place that can help people who are reasonably healthy which can give them access to either occasional prescription medication, or low-cost on-going prescription medication. This program needs to have an emergency/disaster branch to it, that offers options for medical emergencies should they arise. This program should largely be an expansion of the “urgent care” phenomenon in America. More and more urgent care centers have sprung up around the nation in a reaction to the sheer costliness of health insurance and the complexities attached to receiving any sort of coverage. Instead of forking over hundreds of dollars a month for an expensive health insurance company, it’s easier to just wait until one actually has an illness or condition that needs treatment, and then go over to the urgent care center—where it’s not crowded and overbooked and there are no super-long wait times. “For patients, urgent-care facilities offer an attractive new option in terms of cost and convenience. They’re designed to handle illness and injuries that are not life threatening, but too pressing to wait for an appointment at a doctor’s office. If you have a sore throat on a Sunday, why go across the borough to the ER to get a strep test when the urgent-care clinic two blocks away can provide the same services?” (Smith, 2017). For many uninsured people, urgent care centers are filling in the gaps in their healthcare. The average cost of a visit at an urgent care center is $150, which is definitively lower than most doctor visits, insurance premiums, and ER fees.
There needs to be government money behind the urgent care system, allowing them to expand their net of coverage a little more, without sacrificing any of their effectiveness. Government subsidization should allow lower rates for families and for elderly adults, along with a discount on prescription medication for those who use an urgent care facility. Urgent care facilities are so effective and so good at what they do, government money could help them expand to a slightly larger, but still efficient size, where they are able to treat more people, particularly lower income uninsured members of society. This would definitely help relieve emergency rooms of much of their overcrowding and excessive wait times. This is a vital solution, particularly since so many ERs are at capacity and facing overcrowding and a crisis of their own (Van Gorder, 2016).
As one component of this program, the government subsidy would cover the implementation of government doctors and nurses who would be the ones helping to oversee more of the care for the uninsured and low-income members of society, helping the facility to still deliver more care. Essentially these government workers need to be treated as helpers to an already efficient and successful system, and help to empower it to treat more people.
Furthermore, there needs to be a branch of the program that covers emergency care but which doesn’t deplete the scarce resource of the ER, where urgent care centers set up satellites within emergency rooms and share the space with them helping to defray costs. For this type of emergency care, there needs to be a flat rate for all services that fall within a general umbrella, such as $1200. For this fee, a patient can go to the urgent care pop-up facility within the emergency room, and get treated for a very serious condition like a broken bone, fracture, sprain, burns, cuts, etc—conditions that need serious and immediate attention but can be treated within a few hours and which don’t require an overnight stay.
In order to access and assign resources in order to empower this program, there needs to be a prototype for expansion of these already successful urgent care facilities, with government and private donor support. The first expanded urgent care center needs to be developed in a major city, and used as a prototype for others, with a one-year minimum testing period. This can be done with a private donation from a wealthy individual or company who believes in the good of the project. An initial donation of one million dollars would be enough to fund basic expansion of a willing urgent care facility for one year, and would allow this project to be presented for government funding and subsidies with viable proof that the program would work all over the country. If given the appropriate support from the government, expanded urgent care centers could spread to at least another ten facilities over the following year, for testing and once they’re successful, this could foreseeably change the face of healthcare in America.



















References
Backman, M. (2017, July 12). Guess How Many Americans Don't Have Health Insurance. Retrieved from https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/07/12/guess-how-many-americans-dont-have-health-insuranc.aspx
Smith, P. (2017, February 28). Why Urgent Care Centers Are Popping Up Everywhere - American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine (AAUCM). Retrieved from http://aaucm.org/about/news/newsdetail.aspx?a=10492
Van Gorder, President and CEO, Scripps Health, C. (2016, January 11). Emergency rooms facing public health crisis. Retrieved from https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/emergency-rooms-facing-public-health-crisis.html