My mentor Clayton Christensen taught us that disruptors win by being cheaper. They enter the market at the bottom with “good enough” alternatives that cost less, then gradually move upmarket, as Toyota’s economy cars eventually gave rise to Lexus. Yet urgent care is disrupting American healthcare even while charging somewhat more than a traditional primary care visit, and the strategy is working brilliantly.
To understand the trend more deeply, I interviewed Dr. Andrea Giamalva, who spent more than a decade as a family medicine physician before becoming the Chief Medical Officer at the urgent care IT company Experity. The transition gave her a unique vantage point on one of healthcare’s most paradoxical disruptions: urgent care typically costs slightly more than a primary care visit, yet it’s systematically capturing market share.
This article is part of Branding Strategy Insider’s newsletter. Join the world’s smartest marketers and subscribe here for actionable insights delivered directly to your inbox.
The numbers tell a startling story. According to Giamalva, between 40% and 80% of patients walking through urgent care doors don’t have a primary care provider listed in their records. For Gen Z, that lack of traditional primary care relationships approaches 40% of the entire generation, with the figures being about 30% for millennials, 20% for Gen X, and just 7-10% for baby boomers. For Gen Z, these patients aren’t abandoning primary care so much as never having that relationship in the first place.
“There are estimates that anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000, and even in some studies as high as 80,000, primary care physicians will be lacking by 2037,” Giamalva explains. “Urgent care is truly the industry that is stepping up and stepping into those care gaps.”
The Good-Enough Offering That Excels
Here’s where urgent care becomes fascinating as a case study in disruption. While a primary care visit might be cheaper on paper, urgent care wins on dimensions that increasingly matter more: same-day access, modest wait times (typically under 45 minutes), and location convenience. It’s not the cheapest option, but for patients without established primary care relationships — or those who can’t get same-day appointments — it’s demonstrably superior on the metrics they care about.
On the other end, urgent care is siphoning patients from emergency departments, where visit costs can run 5 to 20 times higher. Patients with high-deductible health plans, now increasingly the norm, feel this differential acutely in their wallets. Payers, naturally, also have strong incentives to steer patients toward urgent care for non-emergency conditions.
The result is a new healthcare paradigm that exemplifies asymmetric competition. Urgent care isn’t trying to beat primary care offices or EDs at their own game. It’s competing on a different value proposition.
The Technology Imperative
What makes this disruption viable now, when urgent care has existed for decades? Giamalva points to AI and health IT as critical enablers transforming urgent care from a convenience into a genuine primary care alternative for routine needs.
“The key with AI technology is that, for far too long in healthcare, anyone from the front desk all the way up to physicians has been working well below the level of their license because of all the administrative burden,” she notes.
Experity’s platform illustrates how technology is reshaping the urgent care experience. Patients can secure their place in line before arrival and receive realistic wait-time estimates—basic retail expectations that traditional healthcare has struggled to meet. In the exam room, ambient AI scribes document visits while providers maintain eye contact with patients, a stark contrast to the keyboard-focused interactions that have eroded the doctor-patient relationship.
As a marketer, your job is to compete. Compete differently with The Blake Project.
The technology extends beyond the visit itself. Experity’s “Care Agent” system delivers discharge instructions via text link immediately after visits, provides lab results through the same frictionless channel, and enables ongoing communication without requiring patients to download apps, remember passwords, or navigate patient portals (which, Giamalva notes, more than half of patients abandon anyway).
Redefining The Continuum
Giamalva envisions urgent care’s future role as handling lower-complexity patients who need some primary care, while traditional primary care offices focus on high-complexity patients requiring care coordination, multiple specialists, and high-touch management.
“What if we were able to kind of distill out those low-complexity patients that are consistently in the hands of primary care, and we recognize that there are not enough primary care providers in the country? Then we release those patients to urgent care space,” she suggests.
The model is already gaining traction. Integrated Health Networks are increasingly incorporating urgent care not as competition but as capacity relief for overwhelmed primary care practices and as a more appropriate setting for same-day acute needs. It is also vastly preferable to sending these patients to often-overcrowded emergency departments.
Lessons For Healthcare And Beyond
Urgent care’s rise offers several instructive lessons that transcend healthcare:
First, price isn’t always the primary dimension of disruption. Urgent care succeeds despite being a bit more expensive than traditional primary care because it delivers superior performance on access, convenience, and experience. Companies fixated solely on cost leadership may miss opportunities to compete on dimensions customers value more highly.
Second, demographic shifts can create entirely new competitive dynamics. Gen Z’s reluctance to establish traditional primary care relationships stems from its approach to consumption.
Third, technology can transform “good enough” into “superior.” Without AI scribes, real-time scheduling systems, and frictionless communication tools, urgent care would remain a less appealing alternative. Technology has made urgent care genuinely competitive in terms of quality while maintaining its advantages in speed and access.
As healthcare grapples with provider shortages, rising costs, and evolving patient expectations, urgent care’s trajectory offers a roadmap. The future of healthcare may not be about finding cheaper ways to deliver traditional models, but rather about redesigning care delivery around what patients actually value.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Steve Wunker, Co-Author of AI and the Octopus Organization:
The Blake Project Can Help You Create A Brighter Competitive Future In The Jobs To Be Done Workshop
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education
FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers
Post Views: 27
