Urgent care medicine and the role of the APP within this specialty

The field of urgent care medicine offers an additional medical pathway for patients who have immediate, but non-life-threatening, medical concerns. Urgent care medicine offers a more varied set of resources and services than a physician office setting, with more flexible hours. This gives patients an opportunity to not have to go to the emergency department for non-emergent care. As a newer specialty within the medical field, certain roles of healthcare providers other than physicians are becoming established, including the advanced practice provider (APP). An APP is a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant, who is licensed to treat under the supervision of a physician. Nurse practitioners' (NP) and physician assistants' (PA) role in urgent care is often seen as an effective, lower cost option to manage common acute minor illnesses seen in the community. Benefits to utilizing APPs in urgent care include decreasing costs to both the patient and health system, enhancing the physician's ability to see more patients, and decreasing wait times, all while continuing to maintain high standards of care. The goal of the authors within this publication is to discuss urgent care as a specialty and further explore the role of advanced practice providers within this setting.