- How does a virtual urgent care visit work?
- What are the benefits of virtual urgent care?
- How can you use virtual urgent care in your business?
Even before COVID-19, there were signs that telehealth usage was increasing. At the time, government regulation created unnecessary barriers and reimbursement challenges that thwarted widespread use. That changed with the pandemic, as clinics shut down for safety but continued to provide care with telemedicine technology.
Today, we’re seeing telehealth expand rapidly into the field of urgent care. Virtual urgent care is changing our businesses and our lives for the better. How? Let’s take a closer look.
How Does a Virtual Urgent Care Visit Work?
The virtual urgent care model provides immediate, one-on-one access to a clinical consultation for non-emergency health situations. The difference between traditional urgent care and virtual, of course, is that in a virtual healthcare event, care is given screen-to-screen over the internet as opposed to in person.
Urgent care is a stop-gap measure between an ER visit and an injury or illness. This is true if the injury happened at work or school. The rise of the urgent care model is chiefly centered around the convenience of the visit. Walk-in urgent care facilities take the heat off a hospital ER while providing the convenience of an on-demand service, and, unlike a hospital, urgent care operates under the treat-and-go model in best-case scenarios.
Typically, urgent care centers are equipped to handle low-acuity conditions but also more serious problems like fractures or wounds. These facilities can refer to an ER, a specialist, or physical therapy, but are in effect one-stop shops for a variety of conditions at unlikely hours when your primary doctor is unavailable.
It’s worth noting that ER treatment costs about 10 times as much for potentially the same type of care.
Today, the urgent care model has evolved to make room for virtual urgent care. A patient can literally dial up a doctor or other clinicians from their smartphone and receive quality urgent care without having to travel. Some of the issues that can be addressed in a virtual urgent care visit include:
- Allergies or adverse reactions
- Bladder or urinary infections
- Colds and coughing
- Diarrhea or foodborne illness
- Fever symptoms
- Migraines
- Pink eye
- Sinus issues
- Strains, sprains, and musculoskeletal injuries
Why would a patient opt for a virtual urgent care visit? What are the benefits of this method of care delivery?
What are the Benefits of Virtual Urgent Care?
Telemedicine has been linked to greater convenience for patients. Compared to in-person urgent care, one study determined:
- Of the 16,000 encounters studied, the average patient saved an average of an hour in a virtual encounter over an in-person urgent care visit
- The cost of the virtual urgent care visit was less than half the price of an in-person urgent care visit ($49 versus $142.66 per encounter)
- Wait times in urgent cares vary from 22.5 to 55.25 minutes and in an ER wait-times can range as high as 17 hours on average
- Virtual urgent care can reach patients in remote locations and “improve health equity among vulnerable populations”
- Virtual urgent care saves patients in rural settings an average of 142 minutes of travel time, $32 in fuel costs and up to $150 in family expenses
Additionally, patients reported high satisfaction rates with virtual urgent care. This is in part because, from the patient or caregiver’s perspective, a virtual urgent care visit can make life easier.
The virtual urgent care model can:
- Decrease the wait-time in a busy urgent care setting
- Cut down on patient exposure to illness during flu season
- Reduce the risk of COVID patient-to-patient transmission in a waiting room
- Cut the time and costs of commuting to urgent care
- Increase the convenience of receiving high-quality healthcare
- Cut the costs of care delivery
One of the latest applications for virtual urgent care services occurs in the workplace, where injury can cost employers a great deal of money, as well as unnecessary days lost, increased OSHA recordables, and more. How can companies bring the idea of virtual urgent care into their business and how can this service benefit their bottom line?
How Can You Use Virtual Urgent Care in Your Business?
Virtual urgent care continues to evolve. Some of the latest urgent care models bring telemedicine directly into the workplace to help with worker injury. Telemedicine has become a means of ‘forward triage,’ meaning it offers triage before the patient visits an emergency department. This is particularly significant for businesses who may be paying the price associated with workplace injuries for their employees.
In the United States, the direct financial costs of workplace injuries are greater than $170 billion annually. The greatest category of injury in today’s workplace are musculoskeletal in nature, with strains, sprains, trips, and falls, heading the types of ailments workers face.
Unfortunately, the go-to response for most of these situations has always been a trip to the ER, which is the costliest point of entry into the American healthcare system. These crisis care delivery points are reliable in the extreme—they can handle anything that could happen on the job, no matter how serious—and they are always open. The problem is that most of the time, the response to a workplace injury that is minor is disproportionate. This drives up costs to our healthcare system, to the patient, and to a business.
To see how OrthoLive Remote Injury Care can save you up to 80% on your workplace injury costs in the first year, schedule your demo today.
