QuickTake:

As wait times in emergency rooms increase, state lawmakers want urgent care clinics to meet minimum standards so providers and patients can more readily understand when an urgent care is a better option for a patient. The bill now goes to the state Senate.

A bill that would set minimum care standards for Oregon’s urgent care clinics has strong backing from Lane County legislators looking for ways to take pressure off hospital emergency rooms.

The proposal passed its first test Wednesday, Feb. 18, in the Oregon House. The lower chamber without opposition passed House Bill 4107, which is sponsored by Rep. Nancy Nathanson, D-North Eugene, and Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene. In all, 41 legislators supported the bill in the House, with 19 legislators excused for absences.

The bill comes as urgent care clinics are increasingly used for health care as primary providers have increased loads and emergency room patients face long waits, including at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield.

But the state does not not have definitions or regulations specific to urgent care clinics, leaving the public with a murky picture of what they can and cannot do for patients.

“This bill is a common-sense starting point to help patients choose an urgent care clinic appropriate for their situation,” Nathanson said in a statement. “It sets minimum standards for urgent care clinics that can help patients seeking nonemergency care and relieve pressure on hospital emergency departments.”

The bill would set minimum requirements for clinics advertised as urgent care. For example, urgent care clinics would be required to provide key services, including tests for common respiratory diseases, splints for strains and fractures and sutures for simple lacerations. Clinics also would need to describe the services they provide on their websites and near their entrances, along with the insurance they accept.

Those requirements are intended to help patients know in advance where they can go for issues that don’t require a visit to an emergency department. It also allows patients to know in advance if they will be treated at an urgent care facility and helps other medical professionals, including emergency department staffers, give sound advice on where patients can go for care.

Officials at Lane County Health and Human Services back the proposal. 

“Urgent care is supposed to be a place you go when you’re sick and don’t have to be treated in a hospital,” Eve Gray, director of Lane County Health and Human Services, told lawmakers in submitted testimony. “Ideally, anything your doctor’s office can treat could be treated in an urgent care. Unfortunately, there is little consistency among urgent cares in terms of the services they provide. This leads community members, even informed community members like me, to lean toward the ED (emergency department) if they’re not sure whether they can be treated in an urgent care.”

Prozanski, another chief sponsor of the bill, said: “This bill builds on years of work with local health officials and clinics to relieve pressure on our emergency departments by referring patients to the appropriate level of care.”

The bill now goes to the Senate for a vote.

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.