Practice Management
Occupational medicine can be found in more than half of U.S. workplaces, according to newly published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. If data from the Urgent Care Association are any indication, many of the workers and employers who benefit can thank an urgent care operator for that; nearly 73% of respondents who took part in the UCA’s 2018 Benchmarking Report say they …
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Urgent message: Academic research shows that the most effective way to lead is to provide personalized, actionable “on the job” direction and feedback effectually “teaching” employees as they work. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care. Operating an urgent care center can be a challenge for even the most experienced manager. Although we frequently compare urgent care to …
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You’re accustomed to reading the latest good news about the urgent care industry here. Lately, you’re almost as likely to see it on your local TV stations and in the newspaper. But on a website called Shopping Centers Today (SCT)? Yes! And if you somehow came across the post we’re referring to, you’d know that members of the shopping center industry are thrilled to see urgent care continuing to prosper—and that more and more urgent …
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The mere thought of applying for UCA accreditation while you’re hiring, marketing, negotiating contracts, billing and coding—oh, yeah, and providing excellent care to patients at a moment’s notice—could get any urgent care operator’s blood pressure up. UCA says the reality is not all that daunting, however, and is hosting a free webinar to explain why. Your Guide to Success: The UCA Accreditation & Re-accreditation Process is scheduled to take place Wednesday, June 12, at 2 …
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Children who are being bullied will go to great lengths to deny they’re being bullied. Tell the teacher and they’re branded a tattletale. Tell their mom or dad, and the next thing you know they’re marching into the school and raising a fuss. It’s downright embarrassing—and stressful. PM Pediatrics is partnering with the Long Island Coalition Against Bullying in New York to give children who are the victims of bullies another, hopefully less imposing option: …
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The United States Department of Health and Human Services is working on a pilot program that would give ambulance operators the option—aided by incentives—to take patients with nonemergent complaints to lower-cost setting like urgent care instead of the emergency room. While the aim is to reduce Medicare and Medicaid costs, patients would benefit from getting in and out of a healthcare facility in less time, with less exposure to whatever brought other patients to the …
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There’s a strange dichotomy afoot in California emergency rooms: Patients are heading to the emergency room in greater numbers than in years past—but even more of them are leaving against medical advice out of frustration over waiting so long to see a provider, according to data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and published recently in California Healthline. Approximately 352,000 ED visits in 2017 ended with patients leaving after seeing a doctor …
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The 2018–2019 flu season is over—according to the calendar, though new cases continue to be reported. As such, it’s a good time to assess the effectiveness of campaigns to drive immunization rates among healthcare workers. According to data from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), issuing a requirement for healthcare workers to get a flu shot both increases the proportion of staff who do so and lowers the rate of individuals who get the flu. …
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The patient is an 86-year-old man who is driven to urgent care by his daughter. The patient says he has been coughing “for a few days,” but his daughter reports that he has also been experiencing pain in his belly. View the images taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be.
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We’ve all heard how the infamous, impending physician shortage will make efficient delivery of quality care more challenging than ever before. As we’ve told you, those concerns are actually influencing the evolution of urgent care—for example, leading operators to consider greater utilization of advanced-practice providers. Interestingly, a new post on Advisory Board turns the whole issue on its ear by asking the question, “does America have a physician shortage—or are our doctors ‘just bad at …
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