Urgent care fills gap in COVID testing
On a typical day at PhysicianOne Urgent Care in Chestnut Hill, one might mistake the facility for a coronavirus testing site.
That’s how it’s been since late August at least. Coronavirus-related issues have made up the majority of patient visits, from symptomatic cases to those needing a test to be able to travel or go to school.
Patients coming in for a coronavirus test remained steady throughout the morning and afternoon on Wednesday, when PhysicianOne Clinical Quality Manager Amelia Nadler invited the Herald for a look into the day’s operations.
“We certainly fill that gap where they can’t get in to see their primary (care physician) as fast as they need to … That’s a huge gap for people especially where every sniffle that comes up needs to be tested, and we support that,” Nadler said.
She added that sometimes, it even feels like working at a testing facility, with patients wanting to simply get in and get out. Nadler said some patients get frustrated they have to go through a brief appointment to get tested.
The Chestnut Hill location is the busiest in Massachusetts, according to Nadler. There are other sites in Waltham and Medford, along with locations in Connecticut and New York.
The urgent care offers in-person, mobile and telehealth services that have expanded during the pandemic.
Patients filed in one after the other for coronavirus tests on Wednesday, and the phones rang with people looking for a vaccine or a test.
Nadler, who is a nurse practitioner, bounced from patient rooms back to her desk to handle charting, administrative work and calls with test results for coronavirus or other things such as strep throat or blood cultures.
It wasn’t until midday that she saw her first nonCOVID patient, which she celebrated with a lighthearted “woohoo!”
Patients still come to the urgent care center for other ailments such as cuts, bruises, fractures, abdominal pain, fever or sore throat.
But the uptick in coronavirus-related visits ramped up after a mild summer and has continued to stay busy, Nadler said. She attributed the recent explosion of patients — 87 alone on Tuesday — to the delta variant and increased testing protocols for school, work and travel.
Without urgent care, Nadler said the health care system would be “entirely overwhelmed.”
“We’ve become such a resource to the communities especially when their PCPs couldn’t see them, you know, just because they were overwhelmed, or the ERs were overwhelmed or people were afraid to go to the hospitals,” Nadler said, adding that urgent care centers serve a population of people who aren’t severely ill, yet are ill enough to raise concern.
Nadler said she thinks urgent care offices are here to stay, especially as they continue to offer a halfway point of care between a primary care doctor and the emergency room.