Urgent Care Shifts Focus, Remains Competitive With COVID-19 Test and Treat Availability

Urgent care clinics face complex challenges as this year’s flu season persists and diagnoses increase, visit volumes rise, and COVID-19 maintains its public health emergency status. With these seasonal trends comes the return of traditionally standard urgent care visits more commonly seen prepandemic.

It is important for clinics to stay prepared for spikes in COVID-19 cases with test and treat options, while striking a balance with facilitating services for more traditional care needs, such as sprains, sinusitis, and urinary tract infections. As the industry embarks on its third flu season with COVID-19 in the mix, clinics must utilize all the tools, resources, and programs at their disposal to deliver quality care successfully and efficiently at all levels, times, and locations. 

According to data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, millions of people continue to contract COVID-19. As of November 2022, there had been more than 1.1 million cases in the previous month—signaling a steady demand for test and treat for the long haul.

While the demand for COVID-19–related care remains high, those cases are no longer the primary reason for patient visits to an urgent care. COVID-19 testing at clinics has decreased with the availability of at-home test kits along with treatments, but overall visits per clinic per day are significantly higher than preCOVID-19 levels. Addressing COVID-19 cases is a joint effort across health care industry providers. Test and treat services are a promising ongoing solution for reducing hospitalizations and allowing urgent cares and other providers to easily manage COVID-19 cases while shifting their focus to patient concerns.  

Test and Treat Availability  

Clinics are experiencing decreased COVID-19–related patient visits, partially due to the nationwide Test to Treat Initiative launched by the Biden-Harris Administration. The program allows numerous health care sites to prescribe Pfizer’s Paxlovid, an antiviral pill to help high-risk patients avoid severe disease, hospitalization, and death. The Test to Treat program was created to help people quickly access treatment for COVID-19 at little to no cost, but the initiative left out many provider sites—including urgent cares—from participation in the federal program. 

Urgent care clinics were still allowed to prescribe Paxlovid outside of federal programming, but many were hesitant due to uncertainty around the drug, eligibility requirements, and processes. However, after the drug received emergency use authorization and awareness and education grew among the industry and public, most urgent cares now offer Paxlovid. Many clinics that chose to prescribe Paxlovid to their high-risk patients are now maintaining relevance beyond typical urgent care visits. By staying active in the COVID-19 response and competing with care sites that are a part of the federal Test to Treat program, these clinics gained a competitive edge and are serving as comprehensive access sites for more patients.

In fact, urgent care clinics are often better equipped to administer such treatment than some other approved provider sites, such as pharmacies, where rushed visits can result in unclear documentation that leads to inaccurate patient information. Clinics have access to highly accurate, detailed patient medical records, allowing for proper evaluation of allergies, reactions, and vaccination statuses that could interfere with a prescription. Access to patient data and history is huge for ensuring patient safety. The extra 4 to 5 minutes an urgent care visit takes compared to a pharmacy visit can have a drastic impact on patient outcomes. Additionally, by seeking COVID-19 test and treat services with urgent care, patients can be seen same-day—blending speed and convenience with the highest standards of accuracy and patient safety. 

Embracing Opportunity  

For both urgent care and the broader health care ecosystem, the “new normal” is ever evolving. This new standard includes the effects of inflation, staff shortages, increasing demand, and shifting patient expectations. The fluid status of the pandemic has forced urgent care providers to overcome new obstacles and adopt new strategies as they look to deliver the highest quality care, as efficiently as possible, and without increasing the cost of service.

Urgent care’s ability to adapt to health care’s unforeseen circumstances has served patients well and will continue to do so as the pandemic continues. Urgent care will continue to be a convenient, accessible, and affordable entry point to the US health care system.

The current landscape within urgent care allows more room for more standard patient visits, with clinics now better equipped to provide quality care to a larger number of patients than ever before. Test and treat availability in urgent care, along with future developments in COVID-19 care, will continue to aid with pandemic-related cases, creating space to focus on new opportunities for growth and improvement.