Both Patients & Hospitals are Flocking to Healthcare Franchise Centers. Find Out Why.

Patients across America are fed up with the ER, from the bills to the long waits to the impersonal care. That’s why many are flooding to healthcare franchise businesses, including urgent care centers, for treatment of minor illnesses and injuries.

When patients go to the ER, and their condition is not an emergency, they might end up waiting for four or more hours and getting a massive bill in return. This is a huge inconvenience, and can leave a patient in pain for much longer than is comfortable, not to mention a big financial obligation. Many of these visits are unnecessary – a 2010 Health Affairs study found that 13 to 27 percent of all emergency department visits could take place at an urgent care center or a retail clinic.

Patients are catching on that healthcare franchises are a viable option when it comes to their care, for a variety of reasons. Urgent care centers are more in tune with how people live, and how they prefer to receive treatment. They are more convenient, more affordable, and allow patients to get healthier, faster.

In the busy life of an everyday American, they don’t have time to drive across town to their primary care provider if they need antibiotics for strep throat or medication for an ear ache, for example. Healthcare franchise centers are easily accessible, often occupying busy street corners that are near patient’s work, school, or home. Urgent care centers make it possible to get in and out during a lunch break, and get the treatment they need to be well. Hospitals and primary care doctor’s offices would be hard-pressed to say the same.

Needing to call and make an appointment that’s not for a few days with a typical doctor’s office just doesn’t work when a patient needs care now.  Healthcare franchise centers also allow busy patients to come in without an appointment or check-in online to save time.. Busy families can get medication, X-rays, and advice when they need it by stopping by an urgent care center.

While a trip to a hospital or stand-alone emergency room can easily top $1,000, the average urgent care visit costs under $200. Plus, many insurance companies actually cover trips to urgent care centers better than they do ER visits.

And hospitals agree. They don’t want their patients to suffer from inadequate care, and many are aware that their emergency rooms are filled with patients who shouldn’t be there. By urging patients to get their initial consultations at urgent care centers or other health care franchise centers, they can provide more targeted and efficient care. Instead of diagnosing a broken foot, they can look at the urgent care’s X-rays and treat it as necessary.
It’s easy to see why patients and hospitals have discovered the efficiency of healthcare franchise centers. And it’s only positioned to grow more. The healthcare franchise industry is already a $25 billion dollar business, with an annual growth of over four percent.