Earlier this month, during National Urgent Care Awareness Month, Deputy’s team attended the Urgent Care Association Annual Convention. We heard firsthand from urgent care practices and practitioners themselves about what it’s been like working in the field and the changes they’ve experienced in the past few years.
We’re sharing key takeaways including the most recent growth data, emerging topics, and national trends gathered from the event. Read on to uncover the latest industry insights.
Key takeaways
According to urgent care practitioners, there has been a spike in growth in urgent care demand over the past four years. Specifically:
-Patient volume has increased by 60% since 2019.
-26% of urgent care centers have more than 60 visits per day – versus 11% of clinics seeing this volume in 2019.
People, staff, and culture are top priorities that are dominating discussions within the industry right now. Several topics discussed during speaking sessions included:
-Urgent care centers are accelerating organizational performance by cultivating talent.
-Practices are recognizing there’s an increase of staff burnout. As a result, they are focusing on a culture of self-care to reduce burnout and retain good employees.
National trends in urgent care
Conversations during the event revealed that many urgent care practices are heavily focused on increasing staff retention and lowering burnout.
These strategies are must-haves as practices are still navigating ongoing staff shortages that are predicted to last until 2026. Improving morale and churn rates have been critical in reinforcing their workforces with existing talent.
Ongoing staff shortages have also caused many physicians to experience increased burnout. Factors like overcrowdedness, surges of Covid-19 cases, and increased workloads have elevated intensity in the working environment.
If your urgent care clinic needs tips on combatting staff shortages and retaining staff, here are tips and resources to help improve staff retention and lower burnout.
Making changes or improvements doesn’t always have to come in big strides. See small changes you can make to provide stronger patient and staff experiences today.
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How Deputy is making an impact for urgent care clinics
Since using Deputy, Mercy Urgent Care has reduced turnover by 50% and cut their scheduling admin by 75% per month.
Read their full story to see how they’ve minimized overhead and shifted their saved time and resources to focus on quality care for their patients across all their practice locations.
