Orthopedic Case ReportUrgent Care Management of Scaphoid Fracture
Original ResearchFast Track Improves Patient Flow and Wait Times in the Pediatric Urgent Care: A Quality Improvement Project
Case ReportsEscalating Back Pain Leading to a Diagnosis of ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) in Urgent Care: A Case Report
Practice ManagementPatient Arrival Times In Urgent Care
Images Challenge47-Year-Old With Left Hip Pain
Orthopedic Case ReportUrgent Care Management of Scaphoid Fracture
Urgent Care Management of Scaphoid Fracture
By Ashley Blachford / June 27, 2024
Naushair Hussain, DO; Shahmeer Hussain, DO; Clinton A. Hartz, MD Urgent Message: Scaphoid fractures most frequently occur at the mid…
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Original ResearchFast Track Improves Patient Flow and Wait Times in the Pediatric Urgent Care: A Quality Improvement Project
Fast Track Improves Patient Flow and Wait Times in the Pediatric Urgent Care: A Quality Improvement Project
By Ashley Blachford / June 27, 2024
Urgent Message: Fast trackmodels aim to improve patient throughput metrics for low-acuity patients. In this quality improvement project, a process…
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Case ReportsEscalating Back Pain Leading to a Diagnosis of ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) in Urgent Care: A Case Report
Escalating Back Pain Leading to a Diagnosis of ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) in Urgent Care: A Case Report
By Ashley Blachford / June 28, 2024
Urgent Message: Acute coronary syndromes (ACS), including ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), may present with predominant back pain or other non-chest-pain…
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Practice ManagementPatient Arrival Times In Urgent Care
Patient Arrival Times In Urgent Care
By Ashley Blachford / July 1, 2024
The table above shows the percentage of patients within an average day who arrived during each hour of operations, based…
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Images Challenge47-Year-Old With Left Hip Pain
47-Year-Old With Left Hip Pain
By Ashley Blachford / December 19, 2023
One afternoon, a 47-year-old man presents in the urgent care with left hip pain that he says just started in…
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Urgent Care News
Hospital Pediatric Capability Levels Suggested
A study of 1,061 hospitals recently published in JAMA Network Open offers a classification of …
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CDC In Colorado to Manage Bird Flu Outbreak
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has sent a 9-member team of epidemiologists, …
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Cyberattack Costs UnitedHealth $2.45B Against Profitable Q2
UnitedHealth Group—the parent company of Change Healthcare, which is still reeling from a massive data …
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Urgent Care For Kids Deal Adds 11 Locations
Urgent Care for Kids in Houston, Texas, this week announced the acquisition of 11 Pediatrix …
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Sepsis Procedures and Training Now Required For UC Centers in Maryland
A newly minted law in Maryland requires hospitals and urgent care centers to develop evidence-based …
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Original Research Articles
Fast Track Improves Patient Flow and Wait Times in the Pediatric Urgent Care: A Quality Improvement Project
Urgent Message: Fast trackmodels aim to improve patient throughput metrics for low-acuity patients. In this …
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Return Visits and Hospitalization Rates of Adult Patients Discharged with Tachycardia After an Urgent Care Visit: A Retrospective Cohort Study
Urgent Message: Patients discharged from an urgent care clinic with tachycardia were found to have …
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Influence of Clinical Setting on Antibiotic Prescribing Practices for Acute Otitis Media in Children at an Urban Academic Medical Center
Urgent Message: This retrospective chart review study found that the odds of children receiving an …
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NSAIDs in Urgent Care and Emergency Departments: A Narrative Review
Urgent Message: This narrative review of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) characterizes the specific evidence-based indications, …
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Using Urgent-Care-Based Telemedicine to Increase Primary Care Referrals: A Quality Improvement Project
Urgent Message: A quality improvement project demonstrated increased referral rates to primary care from an …
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Clinical Articles
Dyspnea in the Urgent Care: Differentiating Benign From ‘Can’t Miss’
Urgent Message: Patients commonly present with respiratory symptoms in the urgent care setting and not infrequently complain of some degree …
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A Review of Genital Mycoplasma and Ureaplasma Infections for the Urgent Care Clinician
Urgent Message: Mycoplasma species, most notably Mycoplasma genitalium are an increasingly recognized etiology of persistent urethral discomfort and non-gonococcal urethritis …
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How Useful Is Ultrasound in Acute Female Pelvic Pain?
Andrew Alaya, MD, MSc Urgent Message: For time-sensitive diagnoses related to acute pelvic pain, ultrasound is generally the recommended initial …
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Isolated Sternal Fractures After Trampoline Falls in Children: A Case Series
Urgent Message: Isolated sternal fractures in children can occur from relatively minor trauma, such as a trampoline fall, and patients …
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Practice Management Articles
The Urgent Need for STI Testing in Urgent Care Centers
Urgent Message: With STI rates rising, urgent care centers have a unique opportunity to address a pressing public health need …
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2024 Urgent Care’s Top 100 by Number of Locations
Alan Ayers, MBA, MAcc The following table summarizes the 100 largest urgent care operators by number of locations as of …
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Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Urgent Care Site Selection
Urgent Message: Location and accessibility are keys to success for any urgent care. Operators must avoid common pitfalls when evaluating …
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What Does Unclaimed Property Mean for Urgent Care Providers?
Urgent Message: Undeliverable refunds of patient balances do not become property of the urgent care center, but rather, after effort …
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Insights in Images Challenges
CASE REPORTS
Escalating Back Pain Leading to a Diagnosis of ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) in Urgent Care: A Case Report
Urgent Message: Acute coronary syndromes (ACS), including ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), may present with predominant back …
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Atypical Chest X-ray Appearance in a Patient with Cough: A Case Report
Urgent Message: The azygos lobe may be apparent on a chest x-ray and is a relatively …
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Fever of Unknown Origin: A Case Report of Babesiosis Infection
Batsheva R. Sholomson, DO; Danielle Langan, DO; Abbas Husain, MD; Shorok Hassan, DO Urgent Message: With …
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Intraoral Angioedema After Olanzapine Overdose: A Case Report
Urgent Message: Patients may present to an urgent care facility with intraoral angioedema, a life-threatening emergency …
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Expanding the Differential of Thunderclap Headache Beyond Subarachnoid Hemorrhage: A Case Report
Urgent Message: Cerebral venous thrombosis is a serious cause of headache that can present in a …
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HEALTH LAW
Changing an Employee from Full-Time to Part-Time Status
Urgent message: Whether due to reduced staffing needs or employee preference, some employees in urgent care …
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Are Urgent Care Providers Liable if They Don’t Test Patients for COVID?
Click Here to download the PDF. Urgent message: As the severity of newer strains of SARS-CoV-2 …
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Who Can Take X-Rays in an Urgent Care Center?
Urgent message: Given that x-ray is a differentiating feature of “urgent care” and the current challenges …
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What Qualifies Someone to Take X-Rays in the Urgent Care Center? It All Depends on Where You’re Located
X-rays are high on the list of services patients expect urgent care centers to provide when …
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Avoiding Defamation Lawsuits in Urgent Care
Urgent message: People are unlikely to trust their healthcare to a provider with a sullied reputation, …
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JUCM CAREER CENTER
- Urgent Care Physician – Allegheny Health Network (AHN) – Erie, PA January 11, 2020
- Physician to join an Accredited Urgent Care Center – Westmed Medical Group – NY January 9, 2020
- $15K Sign-On Bonus - Urgent Care Physician – Main Line HealthCare January 6, 2020
- URGENT CARE PHYSICIANS – HealthPartners - Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN December 20, 2019
- Urgent Care Opportunity w/ Signing bonus – Watson Clinic - Florida, United States December 20, 2019
Download Past Issues
July/August 2024: Avoiding Long-Term Complications of Scaphoid Fractures
CLINICAL CHALLENGES
29-Year-Old With Chronic Hip Pain
A 29-year-old man presents to urgent care complaining of chronic right hip pain with movement and exercise. He’s an avid …
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70-Year-Old With Fatigue and Edema
A 70-year-old male with a history of atrial fibrillation presents to urgent care for 1 week of fatigue and edema …
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56-Year-Old With Cancer and Developing Rash
A 56-year-old woman presents to urgent care for a rash that developed on her hands, ears, and nose over the …
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60-Year-Old With Annoying Cough
A 60-year-old man presents to urgent care complaining of an annoying cough for several months. He states that he frequently …
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15-Year-Old Gasping for Air
A 15-year-old male with no significant past medical history presents after he was noted to be gasping for air and …
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OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE
Does Concentra’s New Acquisition Foreshadow a New Era for UC and Occ Med?
On the surface, it seems like the kind of event that has become commonplace in urgent care: A large, national …
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Update: The COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Many Businesses Is Off—Again
Just when you thought you had clarity on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s mandate to vaccinate workers at businesses …
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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 …
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Your Occ Med Clients Need Your Support with the New COVID-19 ETS—Immediately
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration just issued an Emergency Temporary Standard intended to protect workers from getting infected with …
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More People Are Trudging Off to Work on Site. Do You Know Who’s at Greatest Risk for COVID-19?
While some employers are content to maintain remote or hybrid work situations for their workers, either because of strong stances …
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Revenue Cycle Management
What Did We Learn From the Change Healthcare Outage?
Phyllis Dobberstein, CPC, CPMA, CPCO, CEMC, CCC Nearly all of us in the healthcare ecosystem were impacted by the cyberattack on …
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Contracting: Primary Care Versus Urgent Care
Heather Rothermel When considering contracting for your clinic, it will be important to know how you plan to market your …
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Why Does Start-Up Contracting Take So Long?
Heather Rothermel Consider this scenario: You’ve decided to open an urgent care center. You’ve secured funding, found the perfect location, …
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What is a False Claim?
Benjamin Barlow, MD; Phyllis Dobberstein, CPC, CPMA, CPCO, CEMC, CCC The False Claims Act (FCA) is a federal statute enacted in …
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Nine Recurring Coding Pitfalls for Urgent Care Clinicians to Avoid
Brad Laymon, PA, CPC, CEMC Over my career as a physician assistant, I have delved extensively into the intricacies of …
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DEVELOPING DATA
Patient Arrival Times In Urgent Care
The table above shows the percentage of patients within an average day who arrived during each hour of operations, based …
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Categorization of Codes Most Frequently Used in Urgent Care
International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes—maintained by the World Health Organization and published in the United States by the Centers …
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Prescription Duration for Urgent Care Patients
Whereas primary care is focused on prevention and management of chronic conditions, urgent care has historically been defined as episodic …
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Urgent Care De Novo Growth by Operator Size, 2022-2023
A compilation of 2022 and 2023 de novo urgent care center data shows a 7% decline in new locations: from …
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How Urgent Care is Becoming More Corporatized
In 2023, the urgent care industry added 1,057 de novo locations—new sites that did not previously exist. But these new …
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Abstracts in Urgent Care
Abstracts in Urgent Care – July/August 2024
Use of NEXUS II Clinical Decision Tool for Blunt Head Injuries in Elderly Patients Take Home Point: Older patients with …
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Abstracts in Urgent Care – June 2024
Using AI to Detect Myocardial Infarction Take Home Point: The use of an occlusive myocardial infarction (OMI) artificial intelligence (AI) …
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Abstracts in Urgent Care – May 2024
Encouraging Shorter Course Antibiotic Prescribing Take Home Point: In this quality improvement project, both education with performance feedback in combination …
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Abstracts in Urgent Care – April 2024
Rehabilitation in Post-Acute Anterior Shoulder Dislocation Take Home Point: This study suggests that routinely referring patients to a program of …
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Abstracts in Urgent Care – March 2024
Omicron versus Flu & RSV – Which is Most Dangerous for Children? Take Home Point: In this study, hospitalization rates …
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
‘As Little as Necessary…’– A Mantra for Urgent Care
“Do as little as necessary, not as much as possible.” This is the mantra I recite throughout every urgent care …
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Our Success in Urgent Care is Defined by How We Play Our ‘Greatest Hits’
Recently one evening, I meandered into a bar on iconic 6th Street in Austin, Texas— America’s epicenter for live music …
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‘What Happens If We Do Nothing?’ Is Still the Right Question
Joshua Russell, MD, MSc, FACEP, FCUCM “It only hurts right here,” Rich told me, pointing to a tender spot on …
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Broader Issues Surround ‘Work Note Seeking’
Joshua Russell, MD, MSc, FCUCM, FACEP Who among us has worked a single urgent care (UC) shift without at least …
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What Happens If We Do Nothing?
Joshua Russell, MD, MSc, FCUCM, FACEP In its most modern form, medicine revolves around action. We are trained as clinicians …
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