Ashley Blachford, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Amoxicillin Has Slight Advantage Over Amoxicillin-Clavulanate For Acute Sinusitis

In a large observational study of 521,244 adults with acute sinusitis published in JAMA, researchers found outcomes were similar between patients treated with standard-dose amoxicillin-clavulanate and those treated with standard-dose amoxicillin. The study compared outpatient outcomes from 2018 through 2023 for new users of amoxicillin-clavulanate (875–125 mg, 2 times daily) or amoxicillin (875 mg twice daily or 500 mg, 3 times daily). Treatment failure was low overall (3.1%) and did not differ between groups. Only …

Visits For Tick Bites Rising Earlier Than Expected

Emergency department (ED) visits for tick bites are surging nationwide, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of April 19, 2026, CDC recorded 85 per 100,000 ED visits were due to tick bites—more than double what is typically expected at this time of year. In Maryland, ExpressCare Urgent Care Centers are seeing an uptick in bites with 160 cases so far that were ultimately treated for Lyme disease, according …

Pediatric Cases of Valley Fever Rising In California

In a 25-year retrospective study of pediatric coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever) at the University of California Los Angeles, researchers found a rise in the number of cases and in the severity of cases, with numbers surging in the past 3 years. Patients were classified to have either: primary coccidioidomycosis, which were patients that were asymptomatic or had localized pulmonary infection; or disseminated coccidioidomycosis, which were patients with a site of extra-pulmonary disease. Among the 81 patient …

Young Adults Rely on Urgent Care as Their De Facto Access Point

Recent data from the National Health Interview Survey shows 90.3% of U.S. adults report having a usual source of care. Most rely on traditional sites, and 77.5% use a physician’s office or health center. Of note, 8.6% identify urgent care or retail clinics as their go-to healthcare setting, with similar rates among men and women. That means as many as 22 million U.S. adults may be using urgent care as their usual source of care. …

Michigan Urgent Care Fills Gaps Left By Planned Parenthood

As markets evolve, urgent care operators often look for unique opportunities to add services that complement care or fill gaps where they exist. In Marquette, Michigan, after a Planned Parenthood clinic shut down, an urgent care operated by a physician entrepreneur has now started offering medication abortion services, according to a report from NPR and KFF Health News. Services are provided by emergency medicine physicians, and 1 of the physicians previously worked at Planned Parenthood. …

Physicians May Not Recall OAR Clinical Criteria For Ankle Injuries

A cross-sectional survey of 74 urgent care and emergency physicians working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, found adherence to evidence-based ankle sprain guidelines was inconsistent despite high reported awareness of the guidelines, as published in Cureus. While 95.9% of physicians were familiar with the Ottawa Ankle Rules (OAR) that predict the need for radiographs for ankle injuries—and 70.3% reported using them—only 36.5% applied them consistently. Additionally, researchers found just 56.8% of physicians correctly identified the key …

AFC Partners With Henry Mayo Newhall in California

AFC Urgent Care has announced a new partnership with the nonprofit Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Santa Clarita, California, for existing AFC clinic locations in Valencia and Canyon Country, according to a press release. With a coordinated model, the urgent care centers can refer patients to the hospital’s care sites for follow-up, specialty visits, or higher levels of care as appropriate. Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital also operates its own branded urgent care center, located on …

Antibiotics Aren’t The Only Drugs That Increase Risk of C. Diff

Researchers found that antibiotics and other commonly prescribed medications substantially increase the risk of Clostridioides difficile infection, and their analysis shows that more drugs impact the gut microbiome than previously believed, as published in Gut. Recent antibiotic exposure (within 30 days) carried the highest risk. Some agents (eg, nitroimidazoles and intestinal anti-infectives) had particularly high odds ratios (OR), likely reflecting treatment-related bias, the authors say. Lipid-lowering agents (aOR 0.8, 95% CI 0.8–0.8) and aspirin (aOR …

Does Your Patient Really Have Penicillin Allergy? Probably Not.

A large international study found that direct oral challenge (DOC) can be a safe and effective strategy for identifying patients who have a true penicillin allergy. Researchers evaluated hospitalized adults who self-reported a penicillin allergy—a label that historically is attached to about 10% of patients, according to the study presented in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Among the 5,121 patients assessed, 30.7% underwent DOC; of these, 95.5% (95% confidence interval, 94.3%–96.5%) were safely “delabeled,” after assessing and …

Physician Use of AI Increases As Confidence Grows

A new survey from the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Center for Digital Health and AI found that physician use of AI has increased substantially, with 81% reporting use in practice now compared with 38% in 2023. The average number of use cases per physician also rose from 1.1 to 2.3. Physicians say they most commonly use AI for research summarization and clinical documentation. Confidence in AI is increasing too, with more than 75% of surveyed …

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