Predicting Volumes in Emergency Rooms vs Urgent Care Clinics

Forecast Healthcare Volume Forecasting is one of the most important activities or processes that guide decision making in several sectors including industrial, economic, and scientific planning. Despite its significance in decision making process, forecasting has obtained little traction in the healthcare industry. However, forecasting patient volumes in emergency rooms and urgent care clinics is important towards decision making regarding the changes in supply of healthcare resources as well as shifts in demand for emergency department resources. According to Batal et al.

(2001), a logical approach to the delivery of urgent care services must incorporate considerations of current trends in demand for these services (p.48). The capability to forecast the number of patients in need of care in an urgent care clinic on any specific day is an important process towards promoting optimization of staffing patterns. It is important to forecast volumes in emergency rooms vs. urgent care clinics since this process helps in matching the levels of staffing to the variation of patient demands.

As a result, forecasting volumes in these two settings in the healthcare sector helps in enhancing cost efficiency and improving patients' satisfaction with care services by lessening waiting times in hospitals. Actually, patients have constantly been dissatisfied with emergency care and urgent care clinics because of excessive waiting times despite the urgency and severity of their healthcare conditions. Generally, forecasting volumes in emergency rooms and urgent care services helps in allocation of resources, establishment of preventative measures, and staffing.

Patient volumes in urgent care clinics are expected to increase more than volumes in emergency rooms in the next two years. Despite the changes in the supply of and demand for healthcare resources in emergency rooms, volumes in these healthcare settings are not expected to increase in a similar manner as they will in urgent care clinics in the next two years.

This is primarily because the daily supply of and demand for emergency room healthcare services is characterized by weekly and seasonal patterns while volumes in urgent care clinics are not necessary influenced by these patterns. Patient volumes in urgent care clinics will increase in the next two years because these facilities offer suitable alternatives to emergency rooms. While these clinics have some similarities to emergency rooms or hospital emergency departments, they employ a considerable number of family physicians.

Consequently, they are similar to family medicine practices and are expected to play a crucial role in patient care given the increased demands for healthcare services in light of limited resources. Moreover, urgent care clinics enable patients to access primary care providers easily than in any other healthcare settings and facilities. Actually, appointments with primary care providers in other healthcare settings like emergency rooms are usually characterized by long wait times.

Emergency rooms have become characterized by extended waiting times, which not only results in patient dissatisfaction but also force patients to look for alternative retail clinics and locations. This has contributed to the significant growth of urgent care centers in the provision of patient care over the past decade (Weinick, Bristol & DesRoches, 2009, p.2). In light of these factors, volumes in urgent care clinics are expected to increase more than those in.