Urgent care centers in the U.S.: Findings from a national survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Due to long waits for primary care appointments and extended emergency department wait times, newer sites for episodic primary care services, such as urgent care centers, have developed. However, little is known about these centers. The purpose of this study is to provide information about the organization and functioning of urgent care centers based on a nationally representative U.S. sample.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a mail survey with telephone follow-up of urgent care centers identified via health insurers' websites, internet searches, and a trade association mailing list. Descriptive statistics are presented.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Urgent care centers are open beyond typical office hours, and their scope of services is broader than that of many primary care offices. While these characteristics are similar to hospital emergency departments, such centers employ significant numbers of family physicians. The payer distribution is similar to that of primary care, and physicians' average salaries are comparable to those for family physicians overall. Urgent care centers report early adoption of electronic health records, though our findings are qualified by a lack of strictly comparable data.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>While their hours and scope of services reflect some characteristics of emergency departments, urgent care centers are in many ways similar to family medicine practices. As the health care system evolves to cope with expanding demands in the face of limited resources, it is unclear how patients with episodic care needs will be treated, and what role urgent care centers will play in their care.</p

2008 sexual health in the South East: a collaborative report by Health Protection Agency South East and the South East Public Health Observatory

Surveillance of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV is undertaken byt he Health Protection Agency (HPA), but is usually presented in isolation from the variety of paublic health indicators which can help interpret these data. Deficits in surveillance data on sexually transmitted infections diagnosed and managed in primary care can present difficulties in the commissioning of services at local level. In this report, we attempt to bring together a range of routine data, and newly analysed data including estimates from primary care datasets, which we anticipate will assist public health professionals and commissioners in needs assessment and in the planning of services. The data presented here supplement and contextualise the routine surveillance data published by the Health Prtoection Agency, in its annual reports and in the quarterly Local Sexual Health Profiles provided to the region's NHS community

GEOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF HEALTHCARE NEEDS AND NON-ACUTE HEALTHCARE SUPPLY IN IRELAND. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 90 JULY 2019

This report provides evidence on the supply of and need for non-acute primary, community and long-term care across geographic areas in Ireland in 2014. This is the first report to be published from the Health Research Board-funded project ‘An inter-sectoral analysis by geographic area of the need for and the supply and utilisation of health services in Ireland’. This report provides the most comprehensive evidence on the geographic distribution of primary, community and long-term care supply to have been published for Ireland to date. Overall, the report finds significant inequalities in the supply of primary, community and longterm care services across counties in Ireland.1 The findings have important implications for future planning of the Irish health system. The overall objective of the project is to provide evidence to inform policymakers about the shift of care, where appropriate, from the acute hospital setting to nonacute care settings. This project is undertaken in the context of significant system reforms in recent years that aimed to, among other things, achieve greater integration in the Irish healthcare system via shifting care, where appropriate, from acute to non-acute settings and building capacity in primary, community and longterm care. The project sets out to provide detailed evidence on supply of services in the non-acute sector, compares supply across regions to identify where nonacute care supply is particularly scarce, and provides evidence on how acute and non-acute services interact, and substitute, within the Irish health and social care system. Evidence generated from this project is of particular relevance in the context of the current Sláintecare strategy (Houses of the Oireachtas Committee on the Future of Healthcare, 2017), a cross-party plan aimed at delivering sustainable and equitable health and social care services in Ireland

Access Update, February 2010

Monthly newsletter for the Iowa Department of Public Healt

The impact of location of the uptake of telephone based healthcare

Telephone healthcare systems have been put forward as a key strategy to overcome geographical disadvantage, however, evidence has suggested that usage decreases with increasing rurality. This research aimed to identify geographical high and low areas of usage of NHS Direct, a leading telephone healthcare provider worldwide to determine if usage is influenced by rurality. National call data was collected (January, 2011) from the NHS Direct Clinical Assessment System for all 0845 4647 calls in England, UK (N=360,137). Data extracted for analysis included; unit postcode of patient, type of call, date of call, time of call and final disposition. Calls were mapped using GIS mapping software using full postcode, aggregated by population estimate by local authority to determine confidence intervals across two thresholds by call rate. Uptake rate Output Area Classification (OAC) group profiles was performed using the chi-square goodness of fit. The majority of calls were ‘symptomatic’ (N=280,055; 74.8%) i.e. calls that were triaged by an expert nurse, with the remaining 25.2% of calls health/ medicine information only (N=94,430). NHS Direct were able to manage through self-care advice and health information 43.5 of all calls made (N=99,367) with no onward referral needed. Geographical pattern of calls were highest for more urbanised areas with significant higher call usage found in larger cities. Lower observed usage was found in areas that are more rural of which were characterised by above average older populations. This was supported by geo-segmentation, which highlighted that rural and older communities had the lowest expected uptake rate. There is a variation of usage of NHS Direct relating to rurality, which suggests that this type of service has not been successful in reducing accessible barriers. However, geographical variations are likely to be influenced by age. There is a need for exploratory to determine the underlying factors that contribute to variation in uptake of these services particularly older people who reside in rural communities. This will have worldwide implications as to how telephone based healthcare is introduced

Review of equality statistics

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) commissioned this review as part of its remit to map the equalities landscape across England, Scotland and Wales. The report examines the extent to which data are available for the following equality strands: sex; ethnicity / race; disability; religion or belief; age; sexual orientation; and also for socio-economic status (social class). The extent to which statistics are available at different levels of geographic classification (UK, GB, England, Scotland and Wales and regional and local areas within this) is investigated. The report addresses the ten domains of equality identified in the equality measurement framework in the Equalities Review.1 These are: Longevity Physical security Health Education Standard of living Productive and valued activities Individual, family and social life Participation, influence and voice Identity, expression and self-respect Legal securit