Practice

For all the discussion and outreach efforts (including in JUCM and JUCM News) to warn healthcare facilities that burnout is a serious threat to providers and, consequently, patients, the problem has become so widespread that U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, MD, MBA writes that it has become a “crisis that is now affecting not only healthcare workers, but the communities they serve.” His department’s report, Addressing Health Worker Burnout—The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on …

Emergency rooms and urgent care centers in some metropolitan areas are struggling under the weight of high patient volumes. As detailed in an article published in the Boston Globe, for example, South Shore Health in Massachusetts is averaging 105 ambulance arrivals daily currently, compared with its more typical 80 to 90 per day in the past. That, naturally, is leading to an overcrowded emergency room (165 patients in the 70-bed ED on a recent day). …

Physician assistants and nurse practitioners (collectively referred to as advanced practice clinicians, or APCs) are becoming more and more essential to the efficient operation of an urgent care center. And with the likelihood of a physician shortage growing with each passing year, you can expect that to be the case for the foreseeable future. As such, you will want to hang on to the cream of the crop. Do you even know what your superstar …

A primary care practice and several urgent care centers in Rhode Island have to pay 103 workers a total of $175,000 in back wages and “liquidated damages,” as well as paying $50,000 in civil penalties, to settle charges that they didn’t keep accurate records and thus failed to pay workers properly for overtime hours worked. The alleged infractions would constitute violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. An announcement on the website of the U.S. …

Workers Who Feel Unsafe Underperform and Ponder Quitting. Your Colleagues Could Be Among Them Multiple sources from within the United States medical establishment are sounding the alarm that workplaces across the country are not necessarily safe for healthcare workers. We’re not talking about the risks inherent in showing up for work in the midst of a deadly pandemic, either. First the American Hospital Association wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, imploring the AG …

Local media in the Ravenna, OH area was atwitter with news of an active shooter outside a VA medical center recently. The drama began when an employee arrived for work and noticed a man with a sawed-off shotgun kneeling and kissing a flagpole in front of the building. When the facility’s security officer was informed and went out to investigate, the kneeling man fired off a shot into the air, triggering calls to 911, a …

Healthcare professionals in general—with urgent care providers prominent among them—are prone to burn out due to the never-ending responsibility for their patients’ health while also having to keep up with the demands of coding, compliance, updates in practice standards imposed by the state and employers…. And certainly things have not been made better by the COVID-19 pandemic. Just how bad things have deteriorated was made evident in a report issued by Augmedix. Taking a review-article …

As JUCM News has reported recently, the dynamics of the federal test-to-treat program designed to ensure efficiency in helping patients newly diagnosed with COVID-19 have proved difficult to decipher. Though as first described it seemed to leave urgent care out of the running to participate, the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) clarified that urgent care centers who meet the relevant criteria may qualify to participate after …

Just a week after we shared the news that New York had become the 25th state to grant nurse practitioners full practice authority (FPA), Kansas has followed suit, tipping the scales to the majority of U.S. states now allowing NPs to deliver care without physician supervision. Proponents claim that broadening the types of healthcare providers authorized to provide care to patients independently also broadens access to healthcare—something that is badly needed in many communities across …

It’s not uncommon to see healthcare workers described as being “on the frontlines” of battling the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a militaristic analogy that hits closer to home than one might appreciate at first. According to an article just published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the potential for moral injury among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic is very similar to rates seen in military veterans who saw action in post-9/11 conflicts. Based on …