The lack of transparency in health care delivery in the U.S. continues to cause confusion on many fronts, and in response to this, the Colorado Legislature is considering playing a role. The issue is the freestanding urgent care centers that have popped up in many towns and cities, offering what can be faster and simpler professional health care response better matched to minor or moderate needs.
It is no wonder they are appealing. Facilities are probably closer to home, and have short hallways and easy check-in counters. Parking may be right outside the door. And, they have the reputation of being less expensive than a hospital.
The care clinics are either owned by local hospitals or by relatively new corporations which specialize in the such facilities.
While urgent care centers are successful at meeting moderate-level care needs, they are also profitable. They are a part of the growing breadth of health care providers.
In this case, what has the Colorado Legislature involved is that there are now also freestanding emergency rooms which can be mistaken for urgent care facilities. Freestanding emergency rooms allow a local hospital to extend its geographical reach in treating more serious medical needs. That may be well and good. But the billing rates for emergency rooms are higher, much higher, than they are for urgent care centers, and patients who had thought they had pulled into the parking lot of an urgent care center may be very surprised when they receive their bill.
In some cases, both emergency and urgent centers are in the same building.
To a large degree the confusion is a matter of familiarity: “Emergency” is not the same as “urgent.” But we have seen little indication that the health care industry is educating consumers on the significant difference, and the error can be very expensive. It is not difficult to imagine that some health care providers are enjoying profiting from the unfamiliarity.
A committee of the state House debated last week the need to caution patients as to just what being treated at an emergency-level center might entail. At check-in, staff would have to make available printed warnings that prices might be higher and that treatment might not be covered by an insurance plan, for example.
In some regards, it seems as though proper health care services’ labeling ought to occur at the federal level. Given the similarity of delivery, Americans’ mobility and their all-state insurance coverage, the same care center mandates ought to apply across the country. But if that is not happening, then the Colorado Legislature is right to be involved. Coloradans should not be blindsided by high health care charges that could have been avoided with a mandated notice.
