By Healthcare Facilities Today

In the past decade, and especially in the past three years, the once out-of-the-ordinary "retail medicine" has become a major category in South Carolina, according to an article on The State website.

In Richland and Lexington counties, there are 11 Doctors Care offices, eight CVS MinuteClinics and three MEDcare Urgent Care offices, according to the article. The hospitals jumped on the bandwagon several years ago, realizing their emergency rooms were overwhelmed with people who needed timely, but not necessarily true emergency, care. Lexington Medical Center has six urgent care facilities, and Palmetto Health has two.

And many in the industry expect the demand for no-appointment, extended-hours care to explode with millions of people getting health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

“We’ve been ready for (the ACA) for months,” said David Boucher, CEO of Doctors Care in the article. “We think that there’s pent-up demand, and we think that it’s significant.”

Others in the varied retail medicine niche have been growing at amazing rates in recent years, the article said. The Urgent Care Association of America says there are more than 9,000 centers in the U.S. now. Merchant Medicine, which advises those in the business, breaks down the numbers differently, counting 4,024 urgent care facilities and 1,456 retail clinics.

Read the article.