Patients face long waits at urgent care

Plus: Super-cheap airfares to Europe; New light rail station for South End; Don't call it 'UNCC'; Higher natural gas bills ahead; Covid numbers fall; Cowfish to open restaurant in Beijing

Sep 13, 2021

Good morning! Today is Monday, September 13, 2021. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C. You might enjoy listening to our audio version on Spotify 🎧.

Need to subscribe — or upgrade your Ledger e-newsletter subscription? Details here.

Today’s Charlotte Ledger is sponsored by Carroll Financial, one of the Charlotte region’s oldest and largest family-owned, independent financial planning and investment management firms:

It sometimes takes a day or more to receive treatment at Charlotte’s urgent care centers; tips for getting in

You’ll find warnings of long wait times for urgent care visits on online scheduling portals and sometimes even on the front doors of urgent care facilities.

by Cristina Bolling

Urgent care centers, typically the convenient fix for a twisted ankle or sudden fever, are seeing long wait times during this resurgence of Covid, as staffs work to treat routine injuries and illnesses as well as testing for and treating Covid.

Big healthcare companies like Atrium Health and Novant Health have created easy-to-use online portals in recent years to hold spots in urgent care queues or to search for urgent cares with the shortest waits. But these days, those portals are a window into the new reality — that the facilities are either busy or understaffed to the point where patients sometimes need to wait a day for care.

Urgent care practices serve a special need in the healthcare market; they’re often a go-to for ailments not treated by a primary care physician’s office like stitches or broken bones, which need to be treated swiftly but don’t necessarily require a trip to a hospital emergency room. And while they’re not designed to replace primary care doctors’ offices, some people who lack a regular physician use them that way.

Adding to the stress on urgent cares, primary care offices have also been slammed during the pandemic, as an uptick in patients seeking care has collided with staffing shortages felt by many industries including healthcare.

At an Atrium urgent care location in SouthPark, all online reservations were booked for the day when the Ledger checked at around 10 a.m. Friday, and the walk-in wait was four hours, a staffer said by phone. She advised getting online in the early morning or even overnight to reserve an appointment, as slots open up at midnight for the following day.

The Ledger called a Novant Health urgent care on Park Road on Thursday around 3 p.m., and was told that the walk-in wait time went beyond the office’s opening hours. The receptionist advised showing up by 8:30 a.m. the next day to be seen as a walk-in.

Both Atrium and Novant have websites where you can hold a spot in line at a local urgent care or check walk-in wait times. Lately, those sites are showing long waits, and it’s often impossible to get on a list for same-day treatment. One day last week, Atrium’s website showed walk-in wait times of “more than 2 hours” in SouthPark and Eastland; Novant’s showed a 4 hour and 23 minute wait in Midtown and no availability at Park Road.

One Ledger reader said she took her teenage son to urgent care centers in south Charlotte every day for three days after he jammed his pinky finger playing basketball, but she was told each time that there was more than a four-hour wait.

A Novant Health spokesperson said the company is seeing a rise in Covid testing and that this summer there have been more patients needing treatment for non-Covid-related illnesses. (Summer is typically a slower time for routine illnesses, compared with winter flu season.)

In a statement, the Novant spokesperson said:

Like health care systems across the country, our hospitals and clinics are experiencing a high volume of patients seeking care for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 illness. Community members should expect higher than usual wait times, especially for non-urgent medical needs. … It’s important for our communities to know that we have the continued ability to care for them, and that they should seek care when they need it at the most appropriate venue. Individuals experiencing a medical emergency such as chest pain or stroke symptoms are encouraged to go to the nearest emergency department. Estimated wait times should not deter them from seeking the emergent care they need.

That said, here are a few tips for getting an urgent care appointment when you’re in need:

Take a ride. Despite what online portals say, it might be worth a drive to check out a facility in-person. We popped into Atrium’s urgent care at the Arboretum last week, and despite a note on the door saying it was full for the day and the online portal saying it was fully booked, we walked in and were told there were several appointments available for later that afternoon and evening. (A cheerful worker took down the note on the door when we pointed it out, saying she was unaware the sign was still up.)
Book early. Atrium Health opens online reservations at midnight for the following day’s appointments. Novant lets you book a few days in advance. Yes, the point of urgent care is typically to go the same day (it’s urgent, right?), but if you’re turned away and that wonky ankle or stubborn rash can wait another day, hop online at midnight and book an appointment for the next day.
Try the small and independent providers. A variety of smaller, independent urgent care companies have popped up in recent years, including BetterMed Urgent Care on South Boulevard and American Family Care Urgent Care with several locations. We called around to a few of them Friday, and most had walk-in waits of a couple hours or less.

Cristina Bolling is managing editor of The Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com

Today’s supporting sponsors are T.R. Lawing Realty …

… and Landon A. Dunn, attorney-at-law in Matthews:

A new light rail station for South End

Plans for a new Lynx Blue Line light rail stop in South End are moving forward, with the City Council expected to approve a contract tonight to design the station.

The stop would be near Atherton Mill/Publix on South Boulevard and Sycamore Brewing/the Spectrum South End apartment building on Hawkins Street. It’s in a bustling area of South End close to where The Line, a 16-story office tower by Portman Holdings, is under construction. The City Council agenda says the council will vote on a $1.9M contract with Kimley-Horn and Associates for engineering services related to the planned stop.

The Ledger reported in January 2020 that real estate sources were buzzing about a potential new stop, and that the city was working with the private sector to find money to build the station. The council’s agenda says the project “is anticipated to include a public-private partnership to fund the future construction of the station.” It didn’t provide details. —TM

UNCC or not UNCC? That is the question.

UNC Charlotte’s Office of University Communications sent out an email this month giving media organizations like ours an update on how to refer to that university up there in University City.

You probably saw the recent news that UNC Charlotte has a new “brand” that ditches “UNCC” and instead encourages everyone to use the nickname “Charlotte.” Using cities and states as shorthand for university names is common around the country — Michigan, Miami, North Carolina.

But the email to the media was more blunt: “Informally, please use Charlotte when referring to the University. UNCC is an incorrect reference and a moniker that UNC Charlotte has not used for many years.” (The directive came from an email address than ended with “@uncc.edu.”)

It’s generally polite to call people what they want to be called. But how much are all of us obligated to participate in UNC Charlotte’s corporate branding efforts?

To paraphrase a joke from this year’s “Charlotte Squawks,” UNC Charlotte is dumping “UNCC” to avoid confusion with UNC Chapel Hill … but now adding to the confusion of people who mistake “Charlotte” to mean something else.

Ultimately, the people will decide what to call something — not PR people and branding consultants. Maybe “Charlotte” will stick. Maybe it won’t. (We’re not planning to refer to the university as “UNCC,” but we’re not going to go out of our way to call it “Charlotte,” either — clarity, not a branding manual, will be our guiding principle.)

In the meantime, we’ll stick with the wisdom of humorist Dave Barry, who in 2004 had some strong opinions on how to order coffee at Starbucks:

We begin with a disturbing escalation in the trend of coffee retailers giving stupid names to cup sizes. As you know, this trend began several years ago when Starbucks decided to call its cup sizes “Tall” (meaning “not tall,” or “small”), “Grande” (meaning “medium”) and “Venti” (meaning, for all we know, “weasel snot”). Unfortunately, we consumers, like moron sheep, started actually USING these names. Why? If Starbucks decided to call its toilets “AquaSwooshies,” would we go along with THAT? Yes! Baaa!
But it’s getting worse. Recently, at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and Death March, Mr. Language Person noticed that a Starbuck's competitor, Seattle’s Best Coffee (which also uses “Tall” for small and “Grande” for medium) is calling its large size — get ready — “Grande Supremo.” Yes. And as Mr. Language Person watched in horror, many customers — seemingly intelligent, briefcase-toting adults — actually used this term, as in, “I’ll take a ‘Grande Supremo.’”
Listen, people: You should never, ever have to utter the words "Grande Supremo" unless you are addressing a tribal warlord who is holding you captive and threatening to burn you at the stake. JUST SAY YOU WANT A LARGE COFFEE, PEOPLE. Because if we let the coffee people get away with this they’re not going to stop, and some day, just to get a lousy cup of coffee, you'll hear yourself saying, “I’ll have a ‘Mega Grandissimaximo Giganto de Humongo-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong decaf.’” And then you will ask for the key to the AquaSwooshie. And when THAT happens, people, the terrorists will have won.

➡️ We’re also hearing that university enrollment figures are due out this week. They might show that UNC Charlotte fell to the #3 largest UNC campus, behind N.C. State and UNC Chapel Hill. Last year, UNC Charlotte edged out UNC Chapel Hill for the #2 spot by fewer than 100 students. —TM

Rock-bottom airfares to Europe — if you’re willing to endure a hassle and take a chance

Airlines are now offering some of the cheapest flights from Charlotte to Europe that you will ever see — in the $300 range round-trip to cities including Dublin, Paris, Rome and many more.

Most of Europe is open to Americans, but traveling abroad can be more of a hassle than usual. Many European countries are open only to vaccinated travelers and still require a negative Covid test before entry. In addition, the European Union recently advised countries to consider restricting Americans from traveling except for essential reasons, though most countries haven’t done that. Oh, and before you board a flight back to the U.S., you’ll need a negative Covid test, too.

Google Flights map of the lowest round-trip airfares to Europe from Charlotte, as of this morning. It included $292 to Milan, $325 to Paris, $304 to Amsterdam, $307 to Rome and $280 to Dublin.

Fares to Europe are typically $1,000 or more in the summer, and perhaps a few hundred dollars less in other times of the year. The low prices now probably reflect much weaker demand, since many people are reluctant to travel to other countries as U.S. Covid numbers remain high. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends against international travel if you’re unvaccinated and adds: “International travel poses additional risks, and even fully vaccinated travelers might be at increased risk for getting and possibly spreading some COVID-19 variants.”

Many of the low fares are one-stop from Charlotte on American Airlines for travel in October. You can browse flights on airline websites, or check out Google Flights. —TM

Related Ledger article:

“Low fare bonanza at CLT” (July 12, with tips for finding low fares)

Cowfish to open in Beijing

The Cowfish, a burger/sushi restaurant that started in SouthPark in 2010, is opening its fourth location next week … in China.

It will be part of the Universal Beijing Resort, a theme park and entertainment complex (like the one in Orlando).

Thom Boessel @ThomBoessel

@The_Cowfish Universal Beijing CITYWALK

In brief:

Higher gas bills: Piedmont Natural Gas reached an agreement with consumer groups that would raise average monthly residential bills by $5.50. The higher rates would take effect in November. The company says the increases are needed to pay for better infrastructure. It had originally sought higher rates. (Winston-Salem Journal)
Covid numbers decline: The number of new daily Covid cases and hospitalizations in Mecklenburg County fell last week, the health department said. It reported 22 new deaths, about the same as the previous two weeks. That’s the second straight week that cases have declined and the first week that Covid hospitalizations have fallen since late June. (Mecklenburg County Health Department)
Blunt Covid talk at Novant: A leaked internal discussion shows that the former chief of medical staff at Novant Health’s New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington believed that the hospital’s Covid messaging needed to be “a little bit more scary for the public” to persuade people to get vaccinated. She said: “We have to be more blunt. We have to be more forceful. We have to say something coming out, ‘You know, you don’t get vaccinated, you know, you’re going to die.’” Novant said in a statement that the meeting was a “frank discussion among medical and communications professionals on how we can more accurately convey the severity and seriousness of what’s happening.” (WBTV)
Wait and see on vaccine mandate: Many large Charlotte employers are taking a “wait-and-see approach” to plans by the Biden administration to require companies with more than 100 workers to have their employees vaccinated. They say they want to see the details and are studying the issue. (Observer)
New CEO at Truist: Truist Financial’s Kelly King retires as CEO today and is being replaced by Bill Rogers. He’ll stay on as executive chairman until March. King, 73, was CEO of BB&T when it bought SunTrust Banks two years ago, which formed Truist. (Winston-Salem Journal)

Taking stock

Unless you are a day trader, checking your stocks daily is unhealthy. So how about weekly? How local stocks of note fared last week (through Friday’s close), and year to date:

Need to sign up for this e-newsletter? We offer a free version, as well as paid memberships for full access to all 3 of our local newsletters:

➡️ Learn more about The Charlotte Ledger

The Charlotte Ledger is a locally owned media company that delivers smart and essential news through e-newsletters and on a website. We strive for fairness and accuracy and will correct all known errors. The content reflects the independent editorial judgment of The Charlotte Ledger. Any advertising, paid marketing, or sponsored content will be clearly labeled.

Like what we are doing? Feel free to forward this along and to tell a friend.

Change newsletter preferences: Go to ‘My Account’ page

Sponsorship information: email brie@cltledger.com.

Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory

The Charlotte Ledger