Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Practice Management

 

Creating the ‘Ideal’ Urgent Care Experience

By bnapolitano  /  July 1, 2019
Urgent message: For owner-operators truly committed to creating “the ideal urgent care experience”—a thriving operating model that benefits patients, employees,…
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Creating the ‘Ideal’ Urgent Care Experience

The Power of Mommy Bloggers to Boost Urgent Care

By bnapolitano  /  July 22, 2019
Urgent message: The family demographic is a dream for urgent care businesses, with social association and physical activity leading to…
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The Power of Mommy Bloggers to Boost Urgent Care

Abdominal Pain in the Younger Adult: Let’s Not Forget Acute Diverticulitis

By bnapolitano  /  July 1, 2019
Urgent message: The differential diagnosis of abdominal pain is challenging because many symptoms and signs are nonspecific and because patients…
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Abdominal Pain in the Younger Adult: Let’s Not Forget Acute Diverticulitis

Repetitive Motion Injuries: Urgent Diagnosis, Patient-Centered Management

By bnapolitano  /  July 1, 2019
Urgent message: Musculoskeletal disorders result in costly, disabling outcomes for Americans—causing significant economic impact (work-related injuries, early retirement, days away…
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Repetitive Motion Injuries: Urgent Diagnosis, Patient-Centered Management

A 27-Year-Old Male with Swelling and Pain in His Hand After an Altercation with a Wall

By bnapolitano  /  July 16, 2019
A 27-year-old man presents with pain and swelling along the ulnar aspect of his left hand. Asked when the symptoms…
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A 27-Year-Old Male with Swelling and Pain in His Hand After an Altercation with a Wall

Urgent Care News

As Flu Rates Climb, So Have Health-Related Absences for Providers (This Is Good News)

We’re fairly sure you recommend that sick patients stay home until they’re feeling better and, …
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For the First Time in Decades, Opioid Overdose Deaths Are Down—but the Fight Continues

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just reported that deaths attributed to opioid overdose …
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UCA Webinar: Ab Pain is a Vexing Complaint; an Evidence-Based Approach Can Save Lives

Patients complaining of abdominal pain in the urgent care center may be as common as …
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Data Breaches Cost $2.2 Million Per Event; Prevention Could Save Your Business

Data breaches cost the United States healthcare system $6.2 billion in 2016, according to a …
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Hurricane Barry Shut Down Urgent Care Centers—a Reminder That You Need a Disaster Plan

As predictions of high winds and flooding made headlines over the weekend, Louisiana urgent care …
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Web Exclusive Articles

The Power of Mommy Bloggers to Boost Urgent Care

Urgent message: The family demographic is a dream for urgent care businesses, with social association …
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Is Cashless Urgent Care on the Horizon?

Urgent message: As a growing number of retail businesses go cashless in an effort to …
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Dealing with and Preventing a Hostile Work Environment in Urgent Care

Urgent message: Workplace harassment has been categorized as an “epidemic” by workplace experts—with medical businesses …
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Why Employee Feedback Doesn’t Always Result in Improved Performance

Urgent message: Despite conventional wisdom, extensive research has shown that giving feedback at work—ostensibly to …
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Want to Become an Effective Urgent Care Leader?

Urgent message: Academic research shows that the most effective way to lead is to provide …
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Clinical Articles

Repetitive Motion Injuries: Urgent Diagnosis, Patient-Centered Management

Urgent message: Musculoskeletal disorders result in costly, disabling outcomes for Americans—causing significant economic impact (work-related injuries, early retirement, days away …
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Top 5 Wilderness Medicine Topics for the Urgent Care Provider

Urgent message: “Wilderness” medicine is less exotic than one would think. Patients with complaints that began during or after an …
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Top 5 Common Causes—and Controversial Conducts—of Heel Pain in Urgent Care

Urgent message: Nontraumatic heel pain is a common presenting complaint in urgent care. Knowing how to accurately diagnose and develop …
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Suspected Pertussis in Infants and Adolescents—What to do?

Urgent message: Familiarity with the schedule for immunization against pertussis, as well as expertise in diagnosing and prescribing treatment, should …
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Practice Management Articles

Creating the ‘Ideal’ Urgent Care Experience

Urgent message: For owner-operators truly committed to creating “the ideal urgent care experience”—a thriving operating model that benefits patients, employees, …
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Are Those Teambuilding Activities Really Worth It?

Urgent message: High-profile teambuilding extravaganzas may get your crew pumped up—once or twice a year, and assuming you can shut …
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Practical Considerations for Buying/Selling Your Urgent Care Practice

Urgent message: As urgent care remains a hotbed of merger, acquisition, and transactional activity, owners and operators may see a …
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Perfecting the Consumer Financial Experience in Your Urgent Care Center

Urgent message: Changes to insurance plan design are resulting in increased financial exposure for patients, with urgent care providers scrambling …
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Insights in Images Challenges

A Construction Worker with Sudden Foot Pain After Stepping Into a Hole

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An 80-Year-Old Man with Rhinorrhea, Cough, and Intermittent Dizziness

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A 27-Year-Old Marathon Runner with Epigastric Pain

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A 48-Year-Old Woman with a Facial Lesion

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A 43-Year-Old Man with Pruritic, Scale Plaque and Vesicles on His Hands and Arms

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A 2-Year-Old Girl with Leg Pain After Jumping on a Trampoline

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JUCM CAREER CENTER

Download Past Issues

July 2019 : Musculoskeletal Pain is Keeping Your Patients Down – Help Them, or Watch Them Falter

VIEW ISSUES ARCHIVE

CASE REPORTS

Abdominal Pain in the Younger Adult: Let’s Not Forget Acute Diverticulitis

Urgent message: The differential diagnosis of abdominal pain is challenging because many symptoms and signs are …
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A 9-Year-Old Girl with Sudden-Onset Sore Throat After a Meal

Urgent message: Sore throat and throat pain are common complaints in the urgent care setting. While …
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An 11-Year-Old Girl with Back Pain and Chronic Poor Appetite

Urgent message: Patients with recurrent symptoms should have an expanded history—including a genitourinary history in premenarchal …
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A 44-Year-Old Man with Cough of Several Weeks’ Duration

Urgent message: Lung cancer—the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the United States—may first present with …
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Infection Masquerading as a Fall in the Elderly

Urgent message: Falls in the elderly may be mechanical or due to an underlying etiology, making …
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HEALTH LAW

The Consequences of a Medical Provider Quitting Without Notice

Urgent message: Patients and communities rely on access to urgent care to augment primary care shortages …
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How Best to Manage an ‘At-Will’ Termination

Urgent message: In most states, employment is at will—meaning that an employer can fire or terminate …
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Do Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants Qualify for Overtime in the Urgent Care Setting?

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice …
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What Exactly Are Whistleblower Lawsuits—and How Can You Protect Your Urgent Care Operation?

Urgent message: The increasingly visibility of “whistleblower cases,” in which employees share in any fines from …
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What is the Liability for an Urgent Care Slandering a Competitor on Social Media?

Urgent message: While competition for patients among urgent care operators can be intense, speaking negatively of …
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CLINICAL CHALLENGES

An 80-Year-Old Man with Rhinorrhea, Cough, and Intermittent Dizziness

Case The patient is an 80-year-old man with history of hypertension and high cholesterol who presents with rhinorrhea and cough …
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A 48-Year-Old Woman with a Facial Lesion

Case The patients is a 48-year-old woman who presents with a single lesion on her cheek/face. As a healthcare worker …
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A 2-Year-Old Girl with Leg Pain After Jumping on a Trampoline

Case The patient is a 2-year-old girl who is brought to your urgent care center by her parents several hours …
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A 27-Year-Old Marathon Runner with Epigastric Pain

A 27-year-old woman who has been training for a marathon presents to the urgent care center with epigastric pain. She …
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A Construction Worker with Sudden Foot Pain After Stepping Into a Hole

Case The patient is a 45-year-old male construction worker who felt pain immediately after stepping down from a truck into …
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OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE

Want to Drum Up More Occ Med Business? You Need to Educate Prospective Clients!

For urgent care operators who offer occupational medicine services, the value of those services is self-evident. Likewise, businesses that already …
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Urgent Care is Forging Inroads in Occ Med—but There’s Still Plenty of Room for Growth

Occupational medicine can be found in more than half of U.S. workplaces, according to newly published data from the Centers …
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Current Drug Test Data Reflect New Trends in Opioid and Marijuana Use Among Workers

As marijuana use becomes legal in more communities across the country and urgent care providers (among others) get the message …
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National Safety Council Stresses the Importance of Workplace Education on Opioids

As we told you in January, new data from the National Safety Council (NSC) revealed that the odds of dying …
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New York May Call on Telemedicine to Improve Access Under Workers’ Comp

Urgent care operators that offer occupational medicine in New York may want to consider what it would take to start …
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Revenue Cycle Management

Optimize Revenue with Improved Claims Denials Management

No matter how diligent your billing staff is about billing charges out correctly, it is inevitable that you will receive …
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Get Ready for the Next Round of Changes to E/M Guidelines

The American Medical Association has announced it is taking the first steps towards revising the new Evaluation and Management (E/M) …
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Be Aware: The CCI Edits, They Are a Changin’

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announce an update to claim adjudication rules for National Correct Coding Initiative Procedure-to-Procedure …
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Correct Modifiers Make All the Difference When Coding for X-ray Services

Q: During a recent internal audit of claims where x-rays were being billed, it was brought to my attention that …
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UnitedHealthcare Discontinuing S9083 and S9088 in Multiple States and Medicare Telehealth Policies

Beginning April 1, 2019 UnitedHealthcare will revise their policies to discontinue reimbursement for HCPCS code S9083, “Global fee urgent care …
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DEVELOPING DATA

Urgent Care Is an Appropriate Setting for Any Age—But What Ages Are Showing Up the Most?

This issue of JUCM, without any plan to do so, demonstrates the age range of patients who realize the value …
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Telemedicine in Urgent Care—Yay, Nay, or Too Soon to Say?

If you read this month’s Urgent Perspectives column (page 1), you were treated to a dynamic conversation between two urgent …
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New Data Show Urgent Care Outpacing Retail and ED Traffic

Urgent care started as something akin to the California Gold Rush; if a physician had the resources, the inclination, and …
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Does Your Website Show Patients How Much Financial Flexibility You Offer?

This month’s Practice Management feature article, Perfecting the Consumer Financial Experience in Your Urgent Care Center, reveals that with increasing …
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Proof: Availability of Urgent Care Lowers ED Traffic—and Could Save Up to $1 Billion

It has always seemed self-evident that urgent care centers, offering a lower-cost and usually faster experience that is also on …
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Abstracts in Urgent Care

Abstract In Urgent Care-July 2019

Rush for Outpatient Stress Test Recommendation (Finally) Examined Key point: Rapid outpatient stress testing (ie, within 72 hours), which has …
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Abstract In Urgent Care-June 2019

Practice of Urgent Care: The Illusion of Multitasking and the Cost of Interruptions Key point: True multitasking is not possible …
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Abstract In Urgent Care-May 2019

Mitigating Risk Through Shared Decisionmaking Key point: Shared decision-making appears to mitigate the risk to clinicians of patient complaints and …
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Abstracts In Urgent Care – April 2019

Rethinking IV Antibiotics for Cellulitis Key point: Oral antibiotics are noninferior to parenteral antibiotics for uncomplicated cellulitis. Erythema of cellulitis …
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Abstracts in Urgent Care-March 2019

Practice of Urgent Care: More Patients, More Decisions, More Fatigue Key point: We should be aware, as clinicians, that as …
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Virtual Urgent Care: Boom or Bust?

Telemedicine remains a hot topic of debate in urgent care circles. In fact, it seems like every urgent care conference …
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I’m Not a Lawyer, But I Play One…

Like many of you, the fear of a medical malpractice claim casts a wide shadow over everything I do. Like …
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Longitudinal Assessment: A Dent in the ABMS Armor?

With the volume of dissent against Maintenance of Certification (MOC) now at a fever pitch, American Board of Medical Specialties …
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Urgent Care and Antibiotics: Advancing Care and Stewardship

Antimicrobial stewardship is defined as a coordinated program that promotes the appropriate use of antimicrobials (including antibiotics), improves patient outcomes, …
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Anger Management: Hostile Encounters in Urgent Care

Eliminating disruption, distraction, and dissatisfaction is paramount to delivering efficient and high-quality care these days. More than ever, urgent cares …
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