Practice Management
One of the selling points of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) was that it would save health dollars by diverting newly insured patients away from the emergency room toward primary care physicians. Instead, ED use has continued to grow. The issue, according to Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard’s School of Public Health, is the same as it’s always been, regardless of an individual’s insurance status: …
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Just weeks after its partner company GoHealth announced plans to break into the San Francisco-area market, Legacy Health is spreading its own wings closer to its home. The company opens its 12th location in the Portland, OR area this week under the Legacy-GoHealth Urgent Care name. If all goes according to plan, the company will keep growing and operate 20 urgent care centers in the Portland area by the end of 2016.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and certain state health departments are looking into 14 new cases of Zika virus to determine if they could have been transmitted through sexual contact. In each case, a man who had traveled to an area where Zika has been confirmed developed symptoms within two weeks of his female sexual partner becoming ill. While the main health concern is that several of the women are pregnant and Zika …
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Telemedicine will be at the center of a pilot program the U.S. Army launched this month, aiming to keep nonemergent cases from clogging up the emergency room. Patients who need immediate—but not emergency—care will be redirected virtually from the Blanchfield Army Community Hospital (BACH) in Fort Campbell KY to an army medical center some 445 miles away. Once screened at BACH, patients will be either see an emergency physician or be directed to an onsite …
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URGENT MESSAGE: Urgent care’s value proposition is “access,” which includes walk-in availability whenever patients have a medical need. However, could using some minimum operating hours as a defining feature of “urgent care” unintentionally restrict access for tens of millions of Americans living in historically underserved communities with population density insufficient to support opening seven days per week and 3,000 hours per year? Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of JUCM—The Journal of …
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Teleradiology Specialists, which set its sights on the urgent care market early on, predicts a rapid increase in volume and market share on the heels of completing a record number of reads last month. The company completed 40% more reads compared with January of last year. At least some of the growth was fueled by adding 52 locations to the facilities for which it provides over-read, PACS technology, and consulting services. Urgent care is a …
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Eleven children have died from flu or flu-related illness this year, and roughly 20,000 are hospitalized every year in the U.S. thanks to influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And yet the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, 2016 reveals that even 14% of parents who had their children immunized against flu this year believe it is “less important” than other childhood vaccines; perhaps less surprisingly, 59% of …
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With travel-related cases of Zika virus infection now confirmed in 20 states and the District of Columbia, it’s likely urgent care centers will see more patients with concerns, founded or unfounded, that they or their children have been infected. Guidance updated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week says routine care is adequate for most babies with suspected Zika virus infection unless there are signs of microcephaly. If there is evidence of …
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Medicare has more restrictive rules for telehealth payments than Medicaid and many private insurers, despite the fact that virtual doctor visits are perceived to be of particular benefit to seniors who have a hard time making it to the clinic. The concern—expressed by some private payers, as well—is that patients would access telemedicine then end up seeing a clinician in person anyway, resulting in a double-hit for the insurer. Medicare reserves telehealth payment mainly for …
Read MoreA 32-year-old man with a history of pneumothorax presents to the urgent care after a sudden onset of left-sided chest pain that started 30 minutes earlier when he was inhaling while smoking a cigarette. He reports shortness of breath, dizziness, and diaphoresis. View the image taken (Figure 1) and consider what your diagnosis would be.
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