Urgent Care Utilization Pivots to Testing, Immunization

According to an Epic research study, urgent care utilization has increased since the beginning of the pandemic, but visits have shifted to provide more testing and immunization and less non-COVID respiratory care.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, urgent cares were increasing in popularity as an alternative to emergency departments for patients seeking immediate treatment with non-life-threatening conditions. 

The Epic study looked to understand how the pandemic has changed the volume of visits and types of services received in urgent care facilities. 

In early 2020, urgent care volume dropped prior to the emergency declaration. Researchers believe this drop in volume resulted from seasonal trends in respiratory infections and rising COVID cases before the emergency declaration.

After the declaration, overall urgent care utilization rebounded and increased in volume as urgent care facilities shifted to infectious disease testing. 

Researchers noticed a change in the distribution of the types of urgent care visits. In October 2020, testing contributed to 40 percent of all urgent care visits. 

In December 2020, urgent care shifted again to account for the delivery of more immunizations with the introduction of FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines. 

Typically, immunization visits at urgent care facilities are seen in small volumes. However, immunization visits peaked at an estimated 3 percent to 4 percent of all urgent care visits in late fall of 2020. 

In 2021, immunization visits peaked at 20 percent of all urgent care visits. In addition, immunization visits in March of 2021 had a sharp increase of 5 times the amount from its previous peaks. 

Since 2017, urgent care utilization has consistently grown. However, urgent care has pivoted to provide more testing and immunizations since the COVID-19 emergency declaration in March 2020.

“As testing and immunization visits typically have different requirements than other types of urgent care visits, these data suggest that healthcare organizations may want to reevaluate staffing and scheduling models to account for the increase in these types of visits,” researchers explained in the study. 

The pandemic has impacted healthcare utilization as a whole.

According to an analysis by Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, healthcare spending and utilization have remained just as low as at the onset of the pandemic.

For the week of April 3, 2021, hospital admissions were 85.5 percent of what was expected and 89.4 percent of what would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic.

The pandemic has caused a significant percentage of hospital admissions. But all other admissions excluding COVID-19 patients were 80.7 percent of expected levels based on pre-pandemic rates in the week of April 3, 2021.

Researchers found that health services spending for hospitals and ambulatory care remained 7.1 percent below expected spending in June 2021. In addition, health service spending on hospitals was 4.1 percent below expected levels for June 2021.