Practice Management
Urgent message: Providing high-quality care and good service is not necessarily enough to attract and keep patients, especially if those patients can take their pick from among several urgent care centers. More and more, urgent care operators need to be aware of how their competitors operate. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity All too often, urgent care entrepreneurs operate in a vacuum. They feel that if they offer a well-appointed facility with good signage, …
Read MoreThe patient is a 4-year-old child who presents after experiencing a blow to the forearm while taking a fall. He is otherwise well-appearing, and other than pain in the affected arm the examination is unremarkable. View the image taken (Figure 1) and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the next page.
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Urgent message: Giant cell arteritis is an under-recognized and easily missed vasculitis of older adults, a challenging but “can’t miss” diagnosis. The urgent care clinician must be able to recognize this entity sometimes referred to as the “great masquerader” and be comfortable initiating timely emergency treatment. Ryan C. Jacobsen MD, EMT-P Giant cell arteritis (GCA), more commonly known as temporal arteritis, is an under-recognized vasculitis of older adults that can have potentially devastating consequences, most …
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The patient is a 17-year-old boy who presents with a ‘twisted” left knee sustained in a fall. He is able to bear weight, though it is obvious he is in pain. View the image taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be.
Read MoreThe patient is a 37-year-old woman in her second trimester of pregnancy. She presents a day after experiencing a fall, with impact to her left hip. She is walking, but with a noticeable limp. View the image taken (Figure 1) and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the next page.
Read MoreThe patient is a 62-year-old who presents with a primary complaint of right shoulder pain that developed over time. The patient denies any trauma and appears well. The history and examination are unremarkable. View the image taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be.
Read MoreUrgent message: Patients who present after exposure to tuberculosis test the clinician’s ability to assimilate broad and generalized information, including a unique set of historical, clinical, and laboratory data required to customize appropriate, patient-specific assessment and treatment plans. By Jacqualine Dancy, PA-C, MPAS Not long after I contributed the article Tuberculosis Screening in Urgent Care Medicine (JUCM, July/August 2010), our urgent care clinic was faced with the exposure to tuberculosis of numerous employees at a …
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Not All Infectious Diseases Society of America Practice Guidelines Are Created Equal Key point: More than 1/2 of recommendations in guidelines from the Infectious Diseases Society of America rely on low-quality evidence. Citation: Lee DH, Vielemeyer O. Analysis of overall level of evidence behind Infectious Diseases Society of America practice guidelines. Arch Intern Med. 2011;171(1):18-22. Researchers examined 41 guidelines published by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) since 1994. Of the 4,200 in- dividual …
Read MoreIn each issue on this page, we report on research from or relevant to the emerging urgent care marketplace. This month, we offer one more snapshot of data presented in a Health Affairs article entitled Many Emergency Department Visits Could Be Managed at Urgent Care Centers and Retail Clinics,1 in which prescribing trends in the urgent care setting are compared with trends in other settings, such as the emergency room and retail clinics. Below, we …
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