Data insights from UCP Merchant Medicine’s Intellivisit software suggest an abundance of missed opportunities for diabetes screening alongside growing urgent care usage
NASHVILLE, Tenn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–UCP Merchant Medicine, the leading provider of consulting services and clinical AI technology for Urgent Care, shared data collected with their Intellivisit software revealing significant gaps in diabetes screening among at-risk urgent care patients. The research study, which included nearly 100,000 urgent care patient encounters, revealed that despite diabetes’ growing prevalence, less than 1% of all encounters included a Capillary Blood Glucose (CBG) test, despite the CBG being a universally available, fast, and simple screening test.
The team’s findings are especially alarming in light of the rapidly growing number of U.S. patients living with diabetes and without access to primary care. The CDC estimates that 11 million U.S. adults have undiagnosed diabetes mellitus (DM). Without proper care, DM leads to a number of serious health issues including cardiovascular disease, stroke, non-healing, chronic wounds, and kidney failure. However, with early diagnosis and appropriate management, these costly and life-threatening complications can largely be avoided.
Urgent care visits rose nearly 35% from 2018 to 2022. Accelerated by widespread COVID-19 related healthcare access issues, patients have been increasingly using urgent care, citing its desirable affordability and convenience profile, in lieu of emergency department and primary care clinics.
Currently, common urgent care practice leaves CBG testing for diabetes screening to the discretion of the treating clinician. The UCP Merchant Medicine team’s data highlights significant opportunities to improve diabetes screening among urgent care patients.
“Our Intellivisit technology uses machine learning to construct targeted suggestions for testing based on over a million urgent care patient visits. The software will prompt urgent care teams to consider the clinically-appropriate tests for each patient encounter, which minimizes the traditionally high rates of variability seen in urgent care settings. As healthcare affordability and primary care access become increasingly problematic, urgent care is serving as the sole point of contact with the healthcare system for a growing number of patients,” said Dr. Josh Russell, Chief Medical Officer at UCP Merchant Medicine. “Urgent care clinicians are uniformly tasked with moving quickly and seeing large volumes of patients. This creates a perfect opportunity for leveraging AI technology as a means of augmenting and standardizing clinician performance. Screening the right patients leads to better health outcomes, more satisfied patients, and cost savings by ensuring that unnecessary testing is minimized.”
These research findings, which will be featured at the annual Urgent Care Association Convention in Chicago, come on the heels of another recent publication by Dr. Russell and colleagues. The teams’ previous study used Intellivisit data to highlight Point-of-care ultrasound’s (POCUS) clinical and financial viability in urgent care settings.
UCP Merchant Medicine has supported more than 70 health systems across the U.S to develop high-functioning urgent care platforms. The company’s AI-based clinical solutions bring unparalleled data insights to healthcare organization leaders. Their urgent care model allows systems to break-even financially with just 16 urgent care visits per day, compared to an industry average of 43.
Research Methodology
Researchers used Intellivisit, UCP Merchant Medicine’s clinical intelligence platform, to assess potential gaps in diabetes screening practices. Among 94,385 analyzed urgent care encounters using Intellivisit, only 473 (0.50%) included a documented CBG test. These 473 patients were matched with at least one non-tested counterpart with similar demographics and chief complaints. Ultimately, 5,380 total matched encounters were included in the final analysis (5.70% of encounters). Within these highly similar populations, 4,907 of the patients (91.21%) did not receive CBG testing, despite indistinguishable characteristics as the encounters where patients had glucose testing.
About UCP Merchant Medicine and Intellivisit Solutions
UCP Merchant Medicine is the backbone behind some of the most successful urgent care platforms in the country. We partner with health systems and operators to build urgent care that works the way it should—lean, fast, and clinically precise at scale. Our strategic advisory services reshape front-end care delivery, integrating operational redesign with real-time clinical execution. The result: platforms that are easier to staff, simpler to manage, and consistently deliver high performance. Across 3 million+ annual visits, our model achieves an average 94 net promoter score and half the industry average financial breakeven at only 16 visits per day, with average door-to-door times of 34 minutes. At the center is Intellivisit Concierge—our clinical intelligence platform. More than decision support, it re-engineer’s intake, sharpens provider thinking, and ensures every patient encounter is aligned to clinical Standard Operating Procedures. Built on 40,000+ hours of physician-led development, it delivers structured, actionable insight—before the provider even walks into the room. Learn more at https://www.intellivisit.com/.
Contacts
For more information about UCP Merchant Medicine and Intellivisit Solutions, contact:
Brandon Robertson
Founder & President, UCP Merchant Medicine and Intellivisit Solutions
(720) 281-0305
[email protected]
For media inquiries, please contact:
Kristin Faulder (on behalf of UCP Merchant Medicine)
(586) 419-4652
[email protected]
