Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Be Aware: Booster Protection Against Omicron Doesn’t Last as Long as We Might Hope

New data from the UK Health Security Agency indicate that booster shot protection against symptomatic COVID-19 caused by the Omicron variant fades within 10 weeks or so. There’s no indication as to whether that means boosters are any more or less successful at preventing severe disease in those who do become infected with the Omicron variant of the virus. The research shows that providing two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine (available in the UK but …

Opportunity Knocks as Millions More Americans Become Eligible for COVID-19 Boosters

The Food and Drug Administration officially blessed the practice of providing COVID-19 booster shots to 12- to 15-year-old children, as well as for immunocompromised children between 5 and 11 years of age. In the same announcement, the FDA shortened the recommended interval between initial vaccination and boosters for some patients. Based on “new evidence,” the agency suggests that patients who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine get a booster shot 5 months after completing …

Health Officials Are Looking to Urgent Care to Bail Out Saturated EDs. Can You?

Urgent care as an industry is in a precarious position as the COVID-19 pandemic surge rages on. Driven by the most transmissible variant to date, multiple states and major cities are grappling with their largest caseloads yet. Overcrowding in emergency rooms is so bad that hospital administrators and public health officials from Philadelphia to Iowa are recommending that patients stay away from the ED if at all possible and opt to visit their closest urgent …

HCA Deepens Its Florida Base by Buying MD Now

HCA Healthcare is making significant investments in the Florida healthcare market, with their latest move being to purchase MD Now Urgent Care. Adding those 59 locations comes on the heels of an announcement in November that the company plans to build three new hospitals in Florida, where it already serves 6.4 million patients through 400 affiliated cites across the state. The company says it’s the largest urgent care provider in Florida. Though just made public, …

Use of a Quality Improvement Tool for the Evaluation of Healthcare Disparities in Urgent Care: A Case Example for Bacterial Pneumonia

Urgent message: While healthcare disparities have been studied in several healthcare settings, it is unclear whether they persist in urgent care. This study may serve as a quality improvement tool to assess whether these disparities persist in an urgent care clinic. Derrick Murcia and Lindsey Fish, MD Citation: Murcia D, Fish L. Evaluation of healthcare disparities in urgent care: a case example for bacterial pneumonia. J Urgent Care Med. 2022;16(4):23-27. Epub ahead of print September …

Time to Presentation for Acute Otitis Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Urgent message: Concern over the potential spread of COVID-19 may (or may not) have affected the timeliness with which parents chose to present with children who had symptoms concerning for acute otitis media, thereby throwing the concept of “delayed” antibiotic prescribing into question. Emily J. Montgomery, MD; Brian R. Lee, PhD, MPH; Amanda Montalbano, MD, MPH; Amanda Nedved, MD Citation: Montgomery RJ, Lee BR, Montalbano A, Nedved A. Time to presentation for acute otitis media …

Urgent Care Will Have to Get Creative to Solve Staffing and Pandemic Crises. Are You Up to It?

With the last days of 2021 winding down, some parts of the country are as deeply embedded in the COVID-19 pandemic as they’ve ever been. In New York City, urgent care centers are seeing up to five times their normal volume while at the same time grappling with staffing shortages (which are at least partially due to the virus to begin with). Patients need care for all the “normal” urgent care complaints while locations are …

Pandemic Challenges Can Be Met—and Overcome. Here’s the Evidence

We’re all aware that it can be difficult for some regions of the United States to attract enough top-tier providers to meet the needs of smaller communities. JUCM has been covering this issue for years, in fact (see Rural and Tertiary Markets: The Next Urgent Care Frontier). And that’s during “normal” times. Lack of access, sometimes poor healthcare literacy, and the politicization of COVID-19 has put an inordinate amount of additional stress on rural health …

That Vaccine Mandate for Private Businesses That Was Called Off? It’s on Again—and the Clock Is Ticking

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s plan to require employers with 100 or more workers to institute a COVID-19 vaccine mandate will go forward after all, thanks to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District to reverse a lower-court ruling that blocked the Emergency Temporary Standard. The deadline for implementation is January 10, 2022, leaving urgent care operators who offer occupational medicine services precious little time to help their clients …

Lawyers Aren’t Keeping People from Getting Vaccinated—but They May Not Be Helping, Either

A consistent rationalization for vaccine-hesitant Americans is an irrational fear that the approved COVID-19 vaccines are not safe. That belief is unfounded, of course, given the wealth of evidence that risk for side effects is minimal while the protection offered by the vaccines is great but that doesn’t stop people from espousing it online and discouraging the undecided crowd from getting the shots. Now the legal profession may be adding to the manufactured controversy. “Vaccine …