Ashley Blachford, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

The Effect of Computer Use in the Exam Room on Patient Satisfaction in Urgent Care

Urgent Message: The use of a computer in the urgent care examination room does not significantly impact patient satisfaction. As such, clinicians can use medical technologies in the exam room while maintaining confidence in the clinician-patient relationship. Justin Bowles, MD; Mitchell Lopes, MS4; Chaya Pflugeisen, MSc, MEd Keywords: electronic health records; physician-patient relations; patient satisfaction; ambulatory care facilities; communication; surveys and questionnaires Abstract Objectives: Primary care literature has shown that the use of technology in …

From Momentum to Action

May is a time to reflect, reset, and carry forward the momentum we’ve built over the first part of the year. Coming out of our 2026 Urgent Care Convention in Chicago, that momentum feels real and shared by all Urgent Care stakeholders. Over the past several months, we’ve talked about advocacy, about proving our value, and about the importance of showing up for one another as an industry. The Convention brought all of that into …

At Odds: Do Clinical Practice Metrics Incentivize Bad Medicine?

Justin R. Murphy, MMSc, PA-C We live in a world that revolves around data. If you have been in the medical field for a decade or longer, you have observed the trend toward increasingly data-driven medical practice. If you have been practicing more recently, you have lived it. Metrics continually shape our practice patterns and influence our care, and their utilization will only increase. Currently, analytics and artificial intelligence tools cannot directly process human cognition …

Amplify the Practice: Highlights from the 2026 UCA Convention

By Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc — President of Urgent Care Consultants; Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine The 2026 Urgent Care Association Convention convened in Chicago this April under the theme “Amplify” — and across roughly fifty clinical and practice management sessions, that word kept landing on the same point: amplify the clinician, don’t replace them. Artificial intelligence, the tonal undercurrent of nearly every track, was framed less as an autonomous …

QuikTrip Sells MedWise Urgent Care To Hospital System

The gas-station convenience store operator QuikTrip Corp. has sold off its 9 MedWise urgent care centers, according to Convenience Store News, effectively exiting the healthcare market. The Saint Francis Health System in Oklahoma has acquired the MedWise centers and will operate them within the health system’s network starting in June, retaining the current staff. While the centers earned Urgent Care Association (UCA) accreditation, growth stalled due to the lack of a hospital network and little …

Syphilis May Lead To Major Cardiovascular Conditions

Researchers who studied data from 1,469 U.S. adults with a syphilis diagnosis without prior cardiovascular disease found that syphilis was associated with higher rates of death and several major cardiovascular conditions, such as stroke and heart attack, over 15 years. The highest risk occurred for those in late-stage disease. Compared to 7,345 uninfected controls, patients with syphilis had about twice the risk of aortic aneurysm or dissection, a 53% higher risk of ischemic stroke, a …

AMA: Making Progress In Burnout Levels, But EM Docs Still Bear The Brunt

Physician burnout rates are declining nationwide, but overall, burnout is still a serious issue, according to the American Medical Association (AMA). The association’s data shows in 2025, 41.9% of physicians reported experiencing at least 1 symptom of burnout—which is an improvement from the 43.2% reporting burnout in 2024 and 48.2% in 2023. By specialty, the highest rates were reported in emergency medicine (49.8%), urological surgery (49.5%), hematology/oncology (49.3%), obstetrics and gynecology (45.7%), radiology (45.2%), and …

CUCM and UCCOP Elect Lindsey E. Fish To Lead as President

JUCM Editor in Chief Lindsey E. Fish, MD, FCUCM, is now leading the College of Urgent Care Medicine (CUCM) and the Urgent Care College of Physicians (UCCOP) as the newly elected president. Members of the CUCM and UCCOP board of directors elected Fish during the 2026 Urgent Care Association (UCA) Conference in Chicago last week. CUCM and UCCOP, as affiliates of UCA, drive timely advances in clinical care, education, research, collaboration, and advocacy for urgent …

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 …

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