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Health Care Tour: “Seeking Patient-Centered Care”
Exigent Walk-in Emergency Clinic
The Issue:
Walk-in clinics are increasingly popular providers of medical care. Advantages include access without an appointment and transparent fee-for-service pricing (usually less expensive).
Lack of continuity of care may be a disadvantage.
Findings:
- Exigent Wade Hampton was the first Urgent Care center in the Upstate of South Carolina, begun in 1981, as an alternative to emergency room care for non-trauma medical treatment and employer-based clinical care.
- A larger percentage of patients now are self-paying (without insurance) self-employed business owners use the clinics for medical care because they cannot obtain or afford health insurance and get the convenience of walk-in treatment.
- Most patients come to Exigent because they can afford to pay for a visit and do not want to sit in a hospital emergency rooms for hours or cannot be worked in by the family physician or do not have primary care. . The clientele are from higher incomes than emergency rooms.
- Many patients are from out of town and need to see a doctor while visiting on holidays.
- A typical cold or sore throat treatment might cost $79 at Exigent, and as much as $500 to $700 at a hospital emergency room with its large fixed costs.
- Exigent does accept Medicare, but at one time did not. Now they cannot afford not to.
- Reimbursement for treatment at Exigent is the same for family practice.
- They typically insist that patients still have a family physician and consult with the family physician for continuity of care. They do not do family practice type of medicine.
- Small clinics can be at a disadvantage in getting proper reimbursement from major insurance companies because they cannot demand different interpretations. Some specialties have moved toward hospital ownership (ob-gyn) because of the difficulty of negotiating reimbursement from insurance companies and the cost of malpractice insurance.
Other Background
The Wade Hampton Clinic has one full-time, and two part-time doctors, 9 other full-time employees: a Nurse, registered Nurse, a Medical Assistant and Radiology Technician, and five clerical staff members along with 25 part-time employees. It sees about 600 patients/week.
Hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends.
Urgent Care as a business model started 25-30 years ago.
When: February 5, 2008
Where: Greenville , SC
Host: James Alexander, MD President; Thomas H. Maskell, MD, Medical Director
Exigent Wade Hampton
2310 Wade Hampton Blvd , Greenville