Ashley Blachford, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Compression Plus Ventilation CPR Is Best For Overdose Cardiac Arrest

In cases of cardiac arrest associated with an opioid overdose, outcomes may be improved if bystander CPR is administered that includes both mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing as well as chest compressions, according to a large cohort study of 10,923 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) cases in British Columbia. As published in JAMA Network Open, researchers investigated the impact of bystander CPR techniques on neurologic outcomes, including among opioid-associated OHCA (OA-OHCA) cases. Of the 1,343 OA-OHCA cases studied, …

AI Model Triages Primary Care Cases To Specialty Care

In a study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model and tested its ability to assist in triaging referrals from primary care to specialized care. Evaluated against a reference standard, the AI tool achieved good overall accuracy of 0.716 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.694-0.737) of referrals with high specificity (0.801, 95%CI, 0.777-0.822) but lower sensitivity (0.542, 95%CI, 0.501-0.582). In other words, the AI model correctly classified 71.6% of referrals while …

Triple-Combination Medication Approved For Treating Hypertension

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new polypill that combines telmisartan, amlodipine, and indapamide for the treatment of hypertension in adults, including use as an initial therapy. This is the first FDA-approved triple-combination medication indicated for initial use in patients who are likely to require multiple drugs to reach their blood pressure goals, according to a press release from manufacturer George Medicines. Most patients with hypertension ultimately need 2 or more medications …

URGENT CARE SELLERS BEWARE: That amazing offer to buy your practice is probably not what it seems

OPINION PIECE by Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, President of Urgent Care Consultants and Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. I’ve recently become aware of “dealmakers” pitching large future payouts for urgent care practices, but only if you agree to sell your practice now. If you’ve received one of these solicitations, it’s important to understand the implications: A stake in a future portfolio sale is illiquid and speculative because there’s no guarantee …

Which States Have The Most ED Visits?

A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis ranking states according to the number of emergency department (ED) visits found that West Virginia had the highest number of ED visits (596 per 1,000), while Nevada had the fewest (226 per 1,000) in 2023. The organization analyzed the most recent available community hospital data from the 1999-2023 American Hospital Association Annual Survey and compared it to population reports from the Census Bureau. Below are the top 10 states …

Only A Quarter of Moms Say Their Mental Health Is Excellent

From 2016 to 2023, self-reported mental health among U.S. mothers declined substantially, with the percentage of moms reporting excellent mental health falling by more than 12 percentage points from 38% to approximately 26%. At the same time, those who self-reported fair/poor mental health increased by 3.5 points from 5.5% to 8.5%. The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine and included more than 198,000 U.S. mothers with children aged 17 years and younger. Physical health …

Global Heat Forecasts Project More Record Breaking Years

In the next 5 years, there’s an 80% chance the summer heat will break global annual temperature records once again. A new forecast from the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Meteorological Office warns of rising temperatures as well as extreme weather incidents such as wildfires, strong hurricanes and heavy rains. They also predict that the annually averaged global mean near-surface temperature for each year between 2025 and 2029 will be between 1.2°C (2.2°F) and …

Buprenorphine Prescriptions From Pharmacists Increased After Rule Change

Legislation in 2022 sought to expand access to the opioid use disorder treatment drug buprenorphine by eliminating previous caps on the number of patients a prescribing provider could manage and by eliminating prescriber waiver requirements. At the same time, pharmacists with prescribing authority were permitted to directly prescribe the medication without a collaborative agreement with a physician, although state-specific restrictive criteria could still apply. As a result of these changes, there was a significant increase …

Amazon Restructures, Keeps Up Its Momentum

This month, Amazon engineered a significant restructuring of its healthcare leadership, reorganizing its Amazon Health Services division into 6 new business units. This overhaul was designed to simplify the structure of the large Amazon healthcare operation following a period of executive departures. In terms of clinical care delivery, Amazon’s One Medical offers membership-based services with a targeted focus on employer groups with same-day appointments and virtual care. Across the country, One Medical currently partners with …

Some Measles Cases Are Showing Up In Vaccinated Patients

Among the 1,197 confirmed measles cases in the United States so far this year, about 3% have occurred in people who received 2 doses of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and 2% in those who received 1 dose, according to an update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Now showing up in 35 states, measles cases have been confirmed in 347 people under the age of 5 years, 446 cases in …

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