Viewing the Paradox of Substitution of High Cost Medical Service from Emergency Medical Center

For a long time, as medical expenditures continue to rise, for payers, in addition to directly reducing the prices of medicines and consumables, there are two solutions in the field of medical services.

In the field of non-life-threatening routine diagnosis and treatment, the patient's situation is not urgent, and there is no need to occupy the resources of more expensive medical services.

If you look only at the US market, the fastest growing in the past 10 years has been Urgent care centers.

The price of diagnosis and treatment in the emergency medical center is only 1/10 of that of the emergency room, the average price of the emergency room is 1,716 US dollars, and the emergency medical center is only 178 US dollars, the cost has dropped significantly.

However, according to a research report published by Health Affairs in April 2021, the emergency medical center did not bring a drop in medical expenses for insurance companies, but instead pushed up medical expenses as a whole.

The emergency medical center, which was originally used to partially replace emergency room services, has become a new source of medical expenditure.

First, the supply-side induced demand exists for a long time.

Secondly, the improvement of the convenience of medical treatment will significantly increase the number of medical visits.

Finally, economic factors are also one of the reasons for the increase in the frequency of visits to emergency medical centers.

If we only look at low-cost solutions for high-cost medical services, if the two coexist for a long time, it is difficult for low-cost solutions to truly scale up to replace high-cost service models.

Therefore, if you want to implement alternative solutions to the high-cost medical service model, you still need to understand the real needs of users and provide a multi-dimensional service framework.