Practice Management
A 75-year-old female with a history of hypertension and diabetes presents with 1 day of dizziness and nausea. She is markedly bradycardic with a heart rate of 32 beats per minute and blood pressure of 88/52 on arrival. She was awake, alert, and oriented.
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Urgent Message: For patients with presumed asthma exacerbation, clinicians must maintain a high index of suspicion for other etiologies, including pneumothorax. This may help avoid delays in potentially life-saving interventions when symptoms persist despite treatment or when physical exam findings are atypical. Badi Eghterafi, DO; Nazanin Hazhir Karzar, MD Keywords: asthma, wheezing, chest pain, pneumothorax, spontaneous pneumothorax Abstract Introduction: Large spontaneous pneumothorax is an uncommon but critical complication in patients with asthma. Clinicians evaluating presumed …
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A 51-year-old male presents to urgent care after falling while skiing. He reports catching an edge in a patch of slushy snow, causing him to pitch forward and land forcefully onto his left anterior chest. He immediately experienced localized pain over the left chest, worsened by deep inspiration and coughing. He denies shortness of breath, syncope, and neck or head trauma. On exam, vital signs are normal. There is focal tenderness over the left anterior …
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A recent Cochrane review and meta-analysis evaluated the impact of “substituting nurses for physicians” in the hospital setting, based on the rationale that demand for health services is increasing worldwide at a time when there is also a shortage of physicians. Leveraging nurses more could be a way to improve access for many provider organizations. Across 80 randomized studies involving about 28,000 patients in 20 countries, researchers from Ireland, United Kingdom, and Australia found advanced …
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March has always felt like a turning point to me. The energy of the new year settles into steady motion, plans become real work, and the direction ahead starts to feel clear. For Urgent Care, that sense of momentum is especially strong right now. In February, leaders from across our field came together in Washington, D.C., for the Urgent Care Association Capitol Hill Advocacy Day. Those few days captured something important about who we are …
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Sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUIDs) associated with the use of “inclined sleepers”—baby seats that are not firm or flat, which also do not align with the established recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)—kept rising even after such products were recalled in 2019, according to a study published in Pediatrics. From 2009 to 2023, there were 158 SUIDs in inclined sleepers, and 50 deaths (32%) occurred after 2019. An additional 108 deaths (68%) occurred …
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Researchers found combining a 15-pathogen point-of-care (POC) respiratory viral panel with an antimicrobial stewardship intervention program resulted in reduced antibiotic prescribing in an urgent care setting in Louisiana, as published in Microbiology Spectrum. Alongside the stewardship program—which included patient education and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s MITIGATE tool kit—the POC panel was used for 296 adult patients, and results were compared with 600 seasonally matched historical controls. Overall antibiotic prescribing decreased from 38.2% …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found low use of COVID-19 antiviral drugs among individuals age 65 and older, even though it’s a population at high risk of severe illness and COVID-19–related hospitalization, according to the recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Researchers examined cases in outpatient settings with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result or COVID-19 diagnosis during June 1, 2023–September 30, 2025. A total of 482,456 patient encounters with a COVID-19 diagnosis …
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The Oregon House of Representatives unanimously voted in favor of a bill that would set minimum care standards for Oregon’s urgent care clinics. Proponents describe the proposed legislation as a starting point to help patients choose an urgent care clinic appropriate for their situation because lawmakers believe there is little consistency among urgent cares in terms of the services they provide, according to local news outlet Lookout. The move is set against a backdrop of …
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As of February 19, 2026, there were 982 confirmed measles cases reported in the United States for the year so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—a high case count for a year that is barely 2 months in. By comparison, there were a total of 2,280 cases through all of 2025. Public health leaders and clinicians are facing 5 new outbreaks this year in at least 26 states. Health departments …
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