Bridging the Gap

This toolkit is full of resources to guide the urgent care clinician to address health disparities. While we practice episodic care, and acknowledge there are limitations to how much we can impact health disparities, this toolkit offers several approaches that may not have been previously considered. Some clinicians may be extremely well versed in health equity and already apply some of the tools to everyday practice, while others might be hearing terms like cultural humility and social determinants of health for the first time. Wherever you are on that spectrum, welcome, and we hope that you find something to apply to your practice or reinforce the work you are already doing to address health disparities in our urgent care patients.

 

Practicing with a health equity lens improves outcomes, enhances patient centered care, and impacts patient satisfaction. However, it requires an unflinching reflection on our own personal practice habits and implicit biases. It requires a level of humility and a desire to do better now that we know better. Urgent care is a unique practice setting with its own challenges for addressing health disparities. However, considering that urgent care has an estimated 200,000,000 encounters a year, we collectively can have a great impact on patients who seek care in our practices from vulnerable groups. Even small changes can incrementally impact these populations for improved outcomes given the large reach of urgent care. In our current state of healthcare, many patients lack a usual source of healthcare and with primary care shortages in many communities, patients to urgent care for their healthcare needs.

 

Patients experiencing health disparities are more likely to report negative encounters with the healthcare system. These small changes implemented across the industry may create more positive interactions for patients, improve feelings of inclusivity, and ultimately impact outcomes. You could be the clinician who restores someone’s faith in the system!! That seems worthwhile.

 

But ultimately, this is a call to action: find something in this toolkit that resonates with you and act on it. Maybe you will endeavor to improve your communication with your patients for health literacy, advocate for improved reimbursement from Medicaid so that more patients can access Urgent Care Services, or maybe you are ready to take a hard look at your personal attitudes that may be affecting the way you care for certain populations and commit to change. If you are an organization, perhaps you want your organization to begin collecting demographic data regarding race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity and commit to sharing that data so that high quality urgent care research can identify gaps in caring for these populations.

 

Thank you in advance for the work you will do on behalf of our vulnerable patients. We look forward to partnering with you in this important work.