Practice Management
Weekly emergency department (ED) visits for tick bites have reached their highest April levels since 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—reaching 104 per 100,000 ED visits. Last year, just 14 states accounted for ~90% of U.S. Lyme disease cases, according to Harvard Health, and the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest are the regions of highest risk. Even so, the reported data doesn’t capture urgent care’s role in treating tick bites …
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A physician leader/owner of an urgent care clinic in Missouri was recently charged with billing fraud and illegal prescribing of controlled substances. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the alleged fraud scheme included the physician billing Medicare and Medicaid for medical services as if he had performed them himself—even though the care was actually provided by assistants who had not yet entered residency and thus were not authorized to file claims. It further alleges …
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Shorter courses of antibiotics may be a reasonable option for kids with uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs), according to a meta-analysis of 13 randomized trials involving 2,010 children published in Clinical Microbiology and Infection. Researchers found that shorter antibiotic courses of 2–5 days prescribed for acute, uncomplicated pediatric UTIs produced outcomes comparable to longer courses of 7 days or more. Relapse rates were similar between groups (risk ratio [RR] 1.08), with only 8 more relapses …
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A systematic review of 43 randomized trials involving more than 14,000 patients found that evidence shows several newer calcitonin gene–related peptide (CGRP)-targeted drugs can reduce chronic migraine frequency by about 2 headache days per month compared with placebo. In the review published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers also found the CGRPs may achieve at least a 50% reduction in migraine frequency, although those findings were sourced from a limited number of studies. Botulinum …
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Patients using the doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP) treatment protocol typically take a dose of the antibiotic within 72 hours of unprotected sex. DoxyPEP has shown some encouraging real-world effectiveness with significant declines in incidence of bacterial sexually transmitted infections (STIs). However, a new study of 26,582 men who have sex with men and transgender women in California from January 1, 2023, to June 30, 2025, published in The Lancet Infectious Disease, found that doxyPEP remained …
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Toy blasters that shoot water beads are popular among kids as well as some adults, and most blasters cost less than $50 with a supply of thousands of water beads. The concern is that the colorful beads look like candy and may be attractive to young children. More than 20,000 water bead ingestions in children younger than 6 years were reported to U.S. poison centers between 2019 and 2024, as published in Academic Pediatrics. The …
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An analysis of persistent vomiting among children in emergency department (ED) presentations found that children under 2 years of age and those with 10 or more episodes of vomiting at presentation were more likely to benefit from ondansetron after discharge than other children. As published in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed 977 children with acute gastroenteritis–associated vomiting between September 14, 2019, and June 27, 2024, and found that overall, 8.6% of children had 3 or …
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Earlier this month, Texas prosecutors filed charges against the owner of a med spa and its supervising physician stemming from the July 2023 death of a customer who became unresponsive and later died after receiving an IV infusion at the spa, according to the American Med Spa Association. The owner and the physician are being charged with murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and delivery of dangerous drugs. The charges also focus on the physician’s failure …
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AI-powered scribe technology is helping urgent care teams fundamentally improve workflow efficiency, according to Andrea Giamalva, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Experity Health, in an interview with Healthcare IT News. Exclusive Experity analysis of more than 400,000 patient visits across 450 urgent care centers since October 2025 demonstrates that urgent cares using an AI scribe reduced documentation time by about 40%. The benefit is direct improvement in throughput: 78.6% of AI-supported visits were closed within …
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The Food and Drug Administration has approved a fixed-dose triple inhaler containing budesonide/glycopyrrolate/formoterol fumarate for maintenance treatment of asthma in patients aged 12 years and older, according to the manufacturer in a press release. The single-inhaler regimen combines a corticosteroid and a long-acting beta2-agonist with a long-acting muscarinic antagonist. The inhaler is intended for asthma patients not adequately controlled on dual therapy. Approval was based on phase III trials, which showed statistically significant improvements in …
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