In every community survey that Conifer Area Council has facilitated, residents have identified the lack of an Urgent Care Facility as a major concern.

In 2010 and again in 2021, Conifer Area Council made commitments to research urgent care facilities, formed Study / Action teams to contact local authorities, conduct research and report their findings.

For reasons that we cite below, Conifer is not identified to have an Urgent Care Facility.

  • We learned that we are not alone. According to a 2018 survey by Pew Research Center, rural Americans are more likely than people in urban and suburban areas to say access to good doctors and hospitals is a major problem in their community. Nearly a quarter (23%) of Americans in rural areas say this, compared with 18% of urbanites and 9% of suburbanites. Rural Americans live an average of 10.5 miles from the nearest hospital, compared with 5.6 miles for people in suburban areas and 4.4 for those in urban areas, according to the Pew analysis.
  • To be an urgent care facility requires special credentialing.
  • The startup costs of a stand-alone ER are around $1.5 million.
  • While not a credentialed urgent care facility, Conifer Medical Center provides some emergency care and is open six days a week. The only holidays it closes are Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Day.
  • For life-threatening emergencies, like a heart attack or head injury, Conifer Medical must wait for an EMS from the local fire department to transport the patient to a hospital.
  • Chief Ware of Elk Creek Fire said that unless there was a legitimate, stand-alone ER that was linked to a hospital, the department would still need to transport patients to a hospital because of strict protocols they must follow. If it is a true emergency, the department would bypass the stand-alone facility for a higher level of care.
  • King Soopers in some locations has a Little Clinic, open 24-hours, but the Conifer manager said our location is too small for that kind of service.
  • A stand-alone ER needs to be profitable for the operator. It would be difficult to make a profit due to cost of land up here along with the lack of sufficient population, according to sources contacted by CAC. Another issue is staffing, which is already a struggle for the medical community.
  • Stand-alone ERs are very expensive for the patient, according to a 9News investigation. They found that providers charge a facility fee in addition to the fee for medical care. According to bills analyzed by 9Wants to Know, UC Health ER, for example, charges a facility fee ranging from roughly $700 to $6,200.
  • According to the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, there is an oversaturation of urgent care facilities in the suburbs across the country. The Urgent Care Association found in 2018 that only 6.7 percent of urgent care facilities are located in rural markets, They speculate that current insurance reimbursement models may not support the costs to operate and staff centers in sparsely populated rural communities, and act as a deterrent for urgent care providers The report states that to break even, most urgent cares need an average of 25 visits a day.
  • One promising note from the Urgent Care Association is that some urgent cares in the south are making it work in rural areas. There is also some very preliminary talk of federal subsidies for urgent cares, the report states.