Shaving the ER Tab on Orlando Medical News

Shaving the ER Tab

By: LYNNE JETER

Solantic Urgent Care Fees Sometimes 90 Percent Less Than Hospital ED

By visiting an Orlando-area Solantic healthcare center rather than a local hospital emergency room, an insured patient can save 79 percent on the visit cost, and an uninsured patient can shave 90 percent off the bill, according to a study conducted by Sarasota-based research firm Healthcare Management Decisions, Inc.

Jacksonville-based Solantic, a leading provider of walk-in urgent care clinics in Florida, commissioned the study, which found that healthcare consumers could save more than $139 million annually after comparing more than 269,000 visits to the emergency room that could have been treated at Solantic.

Researchers discovered that cost savings per visit would have been $517–or 82 percent of total costs–if a patient had visited Solantic rather than the ER for the same ailments. For patients without insurance, the cost savings were more dramatic, at $1,014 per visit, or 90 percent of total costs.

To determine consumer savings, the study compared the average total cost per visit to an emergency department in Orange and Seminole counties in 2006, plus associated physician fees, and adjusted for managed care, government and insurance discounts, to a comparable visit to Solantic. Only ER visits that could have been treated at Solantic were considered, such as minor lacerations, broken small bones, respiratory conditions, second-degree sunburns, sprains, fevers and nausea.

"Emergency rooms are expensive and crowded with patients who have non-emergent conditions," said Solantic's chief medical officer Nathan Newman, MD. "But ERs by necessity are staffed and equipped for emergent, critical conditions, including on-call neurosurgeons, trauma surgeons, anesthesiologists, specially trained nurses and other expensive specialists. ERs also feature specialist equipment, such as CAT scans, MRIs, ultrasound machines and more. All of this costs money, which is passed on to patients, many of whom don't require this type of care."

According to the Florida Hospital Association (FHA), The Sunshine State is facing a crisis in providing emergency care for its residents. One cause of this crisis, according to the FHA, is limited access because of the use of emergency departments for non-emergencies because of convenience, delays in getting appointments with primary care physicians and a lack of alternatives for after-hours, non-emergency care, like Solantic.

"Rather than waiting hours in an emergency room, only to pay 80 to 90 percent more than necessary, patients can visit an urgent care center such as Solantic," said Solantic CEO Karen Bowling, who founded the company with Richard Scott in 2001 with a mission of "providing convenient healthcare at a fair price with as little hassle as possible."

"We offer patients convenient access to board-certified physicians at a fair price that's appropriate for their injuries or illnesses," explained Bowling. "Our centers not only benefit patients, but they benefit the community as a whole, by freeing up ERs to focus on the most critical care and lowering overall healthcare costs."

During 2006, patients who could have been treated at Solantic made 269,368 emergency department visits in Orange and Seminole counties. The average cost of those visits for private insured patients was $556. Comparable visits to Solantic cost an average of $115. Even though insured patients do not directly bear the total cost of the ER visit, with insurance covering varying portions, patients eventually absorb the additional cost through higher premiums and deductibles.

Aetna is one insurer that has benefited from comparable cost savings.

"For the last six years, Solantic has given Aetna members an affordable alternative to the emergency room for their urgent care needs," said Raed Assar, MD, medical director for Aetna. "And by alleviating demand for urgent, but not necessarily emergent services, Solantic has helped improve access to hospital emergency rooms for all of our members."

For uninsured patients, the average ER visit cost totaled $1,129. Of the total number of emergency room visits in 2006, 82,502 were uninsured patients who could have been treated at Solantic, totaling more than $93 million in total costs. Comparable visits to Solantic would have only cost $9.4 million, a savings of $83.6 million. According to the 2004 Florida Health Insurance Study, 19 percent of the population under age 65 in Orange County was uninsured, while 14 percent of the population in Seminole County under age 65 was uninsured.

Solantic has grown aggressively in Central Florida to eight centers, all staffed by board-certified physicians and featuring digital x-ray and lab services on-site. The clinics are open every day of the year.

In 2008, Solantic doubled the size of its 440-square-foot clinic in the East Orlando Wal-Mart Supercenter, which had only been open since 2005. Solantic clinics are located inside three Wal-Mart stores in Florida, including in Kissimmee and Yulee. Bowling said Wal-Mart shoppers like the convenience of being signaled by pager or cell phone when the doctor is available, and accessing a queue screen in the lobby that indicates anticipated wait times.

"We've been very pleased with the community response to our clinic in East Orlando," said Bowling. "We're clearly meeting a need for convenient, fairly-priced healthcare."