Harris Fleming, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Concerns on the Homefront Could Amp Up the Pressure on (at Least Some) Healthcare Workers

JUCM noted some time ago that the COVID-19 pandemic has been taking a toll on urgent care workers (see The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Making Burnout Worse for Physicians Already in Crisis). Now a new report published by JAMA Network Open is providing data bearing that out—along with a possibly surprising nuance. Childcare challenges and other issues related to the pandemic have amounted to increased stress and burnout, leaving an ever-growing number of healthcare providers looking …

Are You Doing Enough to Keep Sex Offenders Away from Your Patients?

You want the best, most reliable clinicians for your patients. And their performance is essential to your future success. There’s more to capability than experience and clinical skill, however, and there could be red flags in an otherwise stellar candidate’s past that they’d be unlikely to mention in an interview. The headlines out of Clallam County, Washington offer a bracing reminder of that as an emergency room physician there has been arrested and charged with …

The Level of Concern Over Monkeypox Keeps Inching Upward. Where Will It End?

JUCM News first alerted readers to rising cases of monkeypox in May. At the time, the news from around the world was more of an oddity than a cause for concern. The novelty has now worn off, however, as the World Health Organization just upgraded the status of monkeypox to an official global health emergency. As noted in The New York Times, the global caseload now exceeds 16,000 in 75 countries. This is a rare …

Polio Has Reared Its Ugly Head in the U.S.

For the first time in almost a decade, someone has been diagnosed with polio in the United States. Per a report from CNN, it’s suspected that the virus identified in the Rockland County, New York man originated in another country. While he himself had not traveled internationally recently, it’s believed that he was infected by an individual who was vaccinated with the oral vaccine still used in some areas of the world. (The U.S. stopped …

The Urgent Care Marketplace Just Keeps Getting Hotter

JUCM News readers are well aware that there’s been tremendous merger-and-acquisition activity in the urgent care marketplace in 2022—and it’s certainly not cooling off in the midsummer period. Most recently, WellNow Urgent Care acquired Physicians Immediate Care and its 55 urgent care and occupational medicine facilities in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. That brings the total number of WellNow centers to 128 in six states. And Fast Pace Health just completed its previously announced investment in …

Remind Patients—and Parents—that Even ‘Natural’ Therapies Can Be Hazardous

Too many patients assume that a supplement labeled as “natural” is unlikely to cause possibly dangerous side effects. That risk is compounded when the person taking the supplement is a child. The potential for negative side effects and toxicity is underscored in an article just published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. In it, the authors cite data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing a 530% increase in pediatric melatonin …

Rural Hospital Are Shutting Down—Leaving Plenty of Slack for Urgent Care to Pick Up

Around 60 million Americans live in areas defined as “rural,” with local hospitals being the most viable option for care—assuming they can find one. That’s getting increasingly difficult, however, as illustrated in an article just published by Becker’s Hospital Review. Since 2011, 76 rural hospitals have shut down across the country, leaving too many patients in a precarious position when it comes to their healthcare. Texas leads the way with 15 closures, but 21 other …

COVID Cases Are Resurging—but This Time No One Is Panicking

A quick look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 tracker reveals that new cases have been rising slowly for more than a month, with hospitalization rates rising even more steadily. Some cities, such as Chicago, are raising their official warning levels to “high.” Los Angeles is looking at reinstituting a mask mandate for indoor spaces. What’s missing is the widespread sense of crisis, or even panic, that has gripped previous surges in …

Will a New Rule Expose Too Much About the Cost of Care in Your UC Operation?

A new rule (effective July 1) from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services now requires health insurance and self-insured employers to post the rates they’ve negotiated with providers. While that could mean unprecedented public access to what was previously eyes-only for insurance industry insiders, the catch is that data posted as *.json (JavaScript Object Notation) files can only be machine-read—essentially making the data inaccessible to all but academics and professionals. So, Alan Ayers, MBA, MAcc, …

Patients Are Becoming Better Informed on Data Collection Practices; Make Sure You Are, Too

It’s unlikely that patients visiting an urgent care center read every word of every document they have to sign before they can actually see a provider. They just want to get in and get relief from whatever complaint motivated them to be there as fast as possible So, they may be a little alarmed when ads for products that somehow relate to the discussion they had with the provider in the privacy of the exam …