ReviewCureus2025
The Role of Urgent Care Clinics in Alleviating Emergency Department Congestion: A Systematic Review of Patient Outcomes and Resource Utilization.
Review in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Barriers to Protocol Adherence in Emergency Departments and Evidence-Based Strategies for Successful Implementation: A Scoping Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Meeting the primary care needs of communities where they are: mobile primary care clinics, test and try evaluation, Nova Scotia Canada.BMC primary care · 2026Article
- Assessing the Consultation Pattern from Emergency Room Physicians to General Surgery Subspecialties: Identifying the Most Frequently Consulted Subspecialty.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Impact of Primary Care Visit Frequency on Non-Urgent Emergency Department Visits in a Large Urban Medical Center.Journal of primary care & community healthArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This systematic review evaluates the impact of standalone urgent care clinics (UCCs) on reducing emergency department (ED) congestion by assessing their influence on patient volumes, wait times, and length of stay. Additionally, it examines UCCs' role in improving patient satisfaction, optimizing healthcare resource utilization, and enhancing cost-effectiveness. A comprehensive literature search was conducted across five major databases (PubMed, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, and Directory of Open Access Journals {DOAJ}) using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and relevant keywords. Twelve peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2024 met the inclusion criteria, focusing on the relationship between UCC implementation and ED performance metrics. The findings indicate that UCCs significantly reduce ED visits, particularly for non-urgent cases, leading to shorter wait times and improved resource allocation. UCCs also enhance healthcare accessibility for underserved populations and are associated with higher patient satisfaction. Cost-effectiveness analyses suggest that UCCs lower overall healthcare expenditures by reducing unnecessary ED visits. However, challenges such as workforce redistribution and regional disparities in UCC effectiveness remain. Integrating UCCs into healthcare systems reduces ED congestion, improves operational efficiency, lowers costs, and enhances patient satisfaction. Future research should explore long-term patient outcomes and strategies for better integration of UCCs within broader healthcare networks.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.