So Tell Me, How Do You Market a $500 Band-Aid in a Hospital Urgent Care Center?
A story on hospital urgent care centers the other day in the Sun Sentinel, Orlando, Florida caught my eye. In a nut-shell, some hospital and system owned urgent care centers charge emergency room prices. When I started looking around the country, the same story can be repeated in community after community. This is just not an isolated one-time event. What don't they get? In a consumer-driven healthcare market, pricing matters. And charging $500 for a 15-minute visit that required a Band-Aid is the perfect example of why there is such an uproar by government, employers, consumers and health plans regarding healthcare cost. It also points out why Walgreens, CVS, Wal-Mart and entrepreneurs are driving the expansion of retail healthcare and outperforming the more traditional healthcare providers. I get it. Hospitals and health systems need to expand and see the urgent care market as a means of revenue generation for combating falling volumes and declining reimbursement. Urgent care ...