Urgency Center Increases Health Care Options, Reduces ER Visits and Costs

A nurse at the CentraCare Urgency Center attends to a patient who needs stitches.

But now, thanks to Blue Cross bringing this health care cost-driver to the attention of CentraCare, a large local hospital system, St. Cloud area patients now have another choice.

When Blue Cross data analysts noticed that traffic to emergency rooms in St. Cloud was much higher than any of their other markets, they didn’t remain idle. Instead, Blue Cross showed CentraCare the data with an offer to work together to find a way to lower costs in their market.

With Blue Cross’ findings in hand, CentraCare saw reason to move forward and devise a solution: a state-of-the-art “urgency center” with a large staff and extensive hours.

An urgency center concept is somewhat different from more traditional urgent care in that, in addition to treating acute illness or injury, an urgency center can also conduct higher-level diagnostic testing through an onsite lab and imaging site. Additionally, patients who need to be hospitalized can be admitted directly to the hospital without going to the ER first, which is not the case with an urgent care clinic.

“What we do at the Urgency Center is reduce what I could call unnecessary visits to an ER,” said Joe Hellie, vice president of strategy and network development for CentraCare Health. “It offers the perfect solution for those unsure if they should visit an ER or wait and see the doctor.”

A clinician examines a patient at the CentraCare Urgency Center in St. Cloud.

A Cost-Effective Solution

Karen Amezcua, senior director of provider contracting for Blue Cross, said the Urgency Center in St. Cloud is convenient and cost-effective.

“Through data, we definitely prove this is a lower-cost option than ER care,” she said.

Increased Access and Value, Decreased Wait Times

The CentraCare Urgency Center in St. Cloud, created in 2014, is open 365 days a year, from 2:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays, and noon to 8 p.m. on weekends. The extended hours provide convenience for working people and families who might be unable to get an appointment with their primary care doctor for an immediate need.

“The experience in most ERs is that if you aren’t that ill or injured, you’re triaged to a lower level. You may wait for hours in an emergency room, while others, with higher acuity illnesses and injuries, are taken care of,” Hellie said. “In reality you could be in an urgency center receiving timely care at a lower cost.”

“Through data, we definitely prove this is a lower-cost option than ER care.”

In its first year, the CentraCare Urgency Center served 20,000 patients, which was paralleled in its second year. They also saw a reduction in their emergency room visits within the first three months of the Urgency Center opening.

Serving “Every Patient Every Day”

Because the CentraCare mission is to “care for every patient every day” with special consideration to serving as much of the population as possible, CentraCare also added an “e-clinic,” Hellie said.

“We realized that even the Urgency Center wasn’t meeting all of people’s needs, so we opened our ‘e-clinic’ to fill the gaps,” he said. Currently, patients using the e-clinic use a computer or smart phone to describe their symptoms in text, but eventually, it will include a video conferencing option.

Hellie said the organization constantly monitors its own work to ensure it is serving patients in the best way possible, and CentraCare relies on its partnership with Blue Cross to learn best practices for this.

“As we close on the second year I really look forward to working with Blue Cross on a collaborative sharing of data between our organizations that meet our community and business needs,” he said. “We’ll come back together and explore what would work better.”

See how CentraCare provides high quality care to people throughout central Minnesota at centracare.com.