Omicron Pushes Short-Staffed Urgent Care Centers to the Brink
Jan 05, 2022
Urgent care centers across the U.S. are grappling with what to do as the fast-spreading Omicron variant hits employees and the demand for Covid-19 testing surges. In some instances, they are closing certain locations for a few days.
More people are turning to the nonemergency clinics for Covid-19 testing, and at-home test kits are hard to come by. As at airlines, which have canceled thousands of flights this month, workers at urgent care centers are testing positive for Covid-19 and are unable to work.
CityMD, a chain of urgent care clinics in the New York City area, closed 31 of its locations in recent weeks, including 12 on Wednesday. A spokeswoman said more locations could close.
Northwell Health-GoHealth Urgent Care temporarily closed about 10 of its 55 locations in New York in recent days, according to Neal Shipley, medical director for its New York urgent care market. We’re trying to balance the need to provide testing with the need to be open and accessible for other things,” Dr. Shipley said. The University of Chicago Medical Center closed one of its urgent aid locations this week so it could redeploy staff and consolidate resources across its network. In the Milwaukee area, Advocate Aurora Health closed three of its urgent care centers because of staffing issues and the surge in demand, a spokesman said.
Reported Covid-19 cases in the U.S. increased roughly 60% this week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Wednesday’s seven-day daily average of cases hit about 240,400 reported infections a day, the CDC said. The agency this week cut the number of days asymptomatic people with Covid-19 need to isolate to five from 10, which would allow people to return to work more quickly.
There were 710 million tests performed in the past week, compared with 688 million tests in the week ended Dec. 9, according to CDC data. “The volume of patients is not driving the closures,” said Lou Ellen Horwitz, chief executive of the Urgent Care Association. The group represents more than 4,000 urgent care centers in the U.S. and overseas. “Staff are sick and have to stay home; that’s the blow we can’t absorb,” she said. “Until this thing peaks and falls we’re going to see more closures.” An increase in the number of urgent care locations in recent years is fueling a broader staffing shortage, Ms. Horwitz said. Year-over-year growth has averaged 10%, hitting 12% in 2019. Growth slowed in 2020 and 2021, but she said she expects more centers to pop up in 2022.
Still, hiring hasn’t been able to keep up with demand. There are hundreds of thousands of open positions across the country, she said, primarily for medical assistants and radiologic technologists—typical support roles in urgent care.In California, Doctors On Duty expects it will have to close temporarily two of its nine locations in coming weeks, when Omicron cases are expected to peak in the region. “The terrible state of staffing in general hits at a point when we’re at our weakest,” said Scott Prysi, medical director for Doctors On Duty, which operates in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. ”Like other employers, we’re having a hard time hiring people in general,” Dr. Prysi said.
SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)