Urgent care has traditionally filled a gap in the healthcare system, providing patients immediate high-quality care as an alternative to emergency room visits, and eliminated the frustration of waiting for an appointment with a primary care provider. But the role of urgent care is expanding as patients under forty choose urgent care as their de-facto urgent care provider. Now more than ever, it’s a critical access point for patients.
This comes with its challenges, especially for operators. Reimbursement intricacies, rising labor costs, and administrative complexities make it hard to protect margins. You just can’t do it without systemwide efficiency.
Efficiency has always been a hallmark of successful urgent care operations. By leveraging existing processes and implementing selective automation and AI capabilities, urgent cares can make their operations simpler, faster and more financially resilient, while increasing patient satisfaction accessibility. And everybody wins.
Maximal Revenues & Throughput with Standing Orders
A simple and effective place to start is with standing orders. Standing orders are predefined protocols that let medical assistants run common tests like flu, strep, or COVID at triage. Roughly half of all urgent care visits use off-site laboratory testing (JUCM, 2025.) Following standing orders helps capture all eligible tests more consistently, raising revenue opportunities by as much as thousands of dollars a provider every month (MGMA, 2025).
Standing orders also improve the patient experience by accelerating the visit. When tests start during triage, clinicians get results earlier, and patients move through the encounter more smoothly. This not only feels shorter and more efficient for the patient, but also gives providers more time to focus on diagnosing and patient care.
Moreover, standing orders favorably impact the use of antibiotics. Protocols within point-of-care testing lower the misuse of antibiotics between 20% and 30%, thereby providing evidence-based care (CDC, 2023; IDSA, 2023). It is critical that protocols be uniform, providing measurable outcomes every day through proper preparation, education, and reporting.
Streamlining Revenue Cycle Management Through Automation
Maximizing visit revenue is only one part of the equation. Many urgent care centers see their profitability eroded by disparate systems. RCM teams work claims in the EMR while expenses such as supply costs live in a separate spreadsheet that isn’t regularly checked against payer reimbursement rates.
By cross-matching their most frequent CPT codes and supplies cost with their top five payers once or twice a year, urgent cares can uncover underpayments, unprofitable services, and opportunities to renegotiate contracts or adjust ordering habits. This relatively straightforward process often goes unaddressed and can uncover thousands of dollars in annual missed revenue.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation takes this process from reactive to proactive. For example, RCM features like our automate eligibility checks and also flags coding errors within the EMR/billing process, thus helping clinics prevent leakage without additional administrative overhead.
Compared with hospital billing, where higher levels of acuity and complexity in payer rules result in higher rates of denial, urgent care centers offer a unique edge. The patient mix will remain more stable, allowing for better control of the controllable. With technology married with prudent spending, finance can remain profitable despite increasing pressure from reimbursement.
Applying AI Towards Optimum Patient Flow and Care
Apart from billing and back-office automation, urgent care centers are incorporating new technology throughout the entire patient visit. AI empowers clinics to seamlessly improve throughput, efficiency, and satisfaction at more touchpoints.
Such use cases include:
- Clinical decision support through AI-powered Scribe, providing accurate visit documentation in real time, and allowing more time with the patient
- Predictive staffing and scheduling through operational analytics, aligning provider coverage with patient demand patterns, focusing on wait time reductions and maximizing capacity utilization
- Personalized patient engagement through Care Agent, which provides automated reminders, follow-through, and education that meets condition-based needs for engaging with healthcare services
- AI-powered call management routes patient inquiries, updates wait times, enhances patient accessibility, and helps avoid overloading the patient reception staff
When implemented within existing processes, such AI tools provide a compounding effect, with better patient flow, improved speed of clinical documentation, and greater throughput for every healthcare provider. More patients can be seen without negatively affecting patient satisfaction, and revenue can be preserved without compromising patient care.
In a marginal revenue scenario, the value addition that AI provides lies in its ability to surface insights from existing organizational processes so that urgent care centers can do more with less.
Implementing Core Operations
Technology alone isn’t enough. Operational excellence is still the cornerstone of success in urgent care. Effective triage, hands-on care, efficient workflow, and definitive clinical pathways allow clinicians to practice at the top of their license.
Clinics that consistently execute these fundamentals deliver higher-quality care while strengthening margins, expanding access, and building lasting patient loyalty.
Conclusion: Integrated Strategy
For urgent care centers in 2026, protecting margins while maintaining access and quality patient care down to consistently executing the fundamentals: running smooth workflows, supporting clinicians with clear protocols, and leveraging technology where it truly makes a difference. When these elements come together, centers can operate efficiently, care for more patients, and ensure every visit leaves a lasting positive impression.
References:
- JUCM (2025). “Urgent Care Data on On-Site Lab Testing.”
- MGMA (2025). “Standing Orders and Revenue Capture in Urgent Care.”
- CDC (2023). “Antibiotic Stewardship Guidelines.”
- IDSA (2023). “Clinical Practice Guidelines for Antibiotic Use.”
- Emergency Department Data (2025). “Impact of Standing Orders on Throughput.”
- HLTH 2025 Observations. “AI Applications in Urgent Care Operations.”
Bobby Ghoshal
Bobby Ghoshal is President and Chief Operating Officer of Experity, the leading technology platform for on-demand healthcare, serving more than 80% of independent urgent care centers in the U.S.
