JOHN SHUFELDT, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP Recently, a friend called to tell me he was going to the airport to meet a woman he met online. He described her as tall, blonde, athletic and, based upon her e-mails and witty repartee, very smart. He brought the photo she e-mailed so he would recognize her when she walked through the gate. Oddly, he never did see her walk off the plane; however, he felt a tug …
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Keeping Workers Well and Your Practice Profitable
Urgent message: Adding a corporate wellness component to a UCOM initiative fosters better relationships with clients and good care for their employees—as well as more business for the practice. Donna Lee Gardner, RN, MS, MBA Corporate wellness is one of the five basic service lines an urgent care occupational medicine (UCOM) clinic is advised to offer in order to position itself as a truly comprehensive resource for employers and their employees. Other primary occupational medicine …
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The Case of a 37-Year-Old Man with Headaches
It is common knowledge that each patient needs to have a symptomspecific evaluation with each visit, but it is easy to be misled by “frequent fliers” who have presented many times with the same complaint. Take this month’s case, for example: a 37-year-old man with a headache who had four emergency department and two primary care visits before finally receiving the correct diagnosis. Accuracy and vigilance must be the goal of each patient encounter, no …
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Management of the Patient Presenting with Epistaxis
Urgent message: Though patients with posterior and bilateral epistaxis should be admitted to the hospital, the vast majority of epistaxis episodes can be treated safely and effectively in the urgent care setting. Nathaniel Arnone, MD, Samuel M. Keim, MD, MS, and Peter Rosen, MD Epistaxis is a common presenting complaint, with 15 per 10,000 people requiring medical attention each year.1 While the presence of blood in the pharynx can cause concern for both patients and …
Read MoreIs Urgent Care “Real” Family Medicine?
Lee A. Resnick, MD, FAAFP I am acutely aware that urgent care medicine is practiced by a variety of specialties. However, family physicians make up the majority of those who practice in urgent care settings, and represent the most likely contingent of practitioners to fill the increasing demand for qualified practitioners in the future. As an organization, UCAOA has made several steps toward improving the competency of family physicians entering the field, from formal training …
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56-year-old woman with swollen, plaque covered leg
The patient is an obese 56-year-old woman who presents with unilateral leg swelling. The area has been weeping for days. On examination, you discover a large erythematous, scaly plaque on the right ankle and lower leg. The patient shares with you that five days earlier she was diagnosed by her primary physician with cellulitis and started on “an antibiotic.” There are no other remarkable findings, and she has no fever. View the photo and consider …
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Managing Wait Times for Greater Customer Satisfaction
Urgent message: Though patient waits are often unavoidable, understanding and addressing the causes can help mitigate negative impact on the patient and the practice. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, Experity The term “urgent care” conveys immediate medical attention, so it’s no surprise that the greatest determinant of customer satisfaction for an urgent care center is how quickly patients are treated and released. But how does a busy walk-in clinic which must be prepared to handle …
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15-year-old boy sustains wrist injury during soccer game
The patient is a 15-year-old boy who presents with pain in the wrist 40 minutes after stopping a soccer ball with his hand. There is no snuffbox tenderness. View the x-rays taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be.
Read MoreBankruptcy Part Two: Honesty is the Only Policy
JOHN SHUFELDT, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP In this challenging financial market, in this space (urgent care medicine), should bankruptcy be something with which you are overly concerned? The answer is an unequivocal, “yes!” Urgent care ownership is not for the faint of heart or the short of capital. As a friend of mine said, “This business has a lot of moving parts and misfiring on any one of them can cause your business to be …
Read MoreDeveloping Data: September, 2008
As an emerging distinct practice environment, urgent care is in the early stages of building a data set specific to its norms and practices. In Developing Data, JUCM will offer results not only from UCA’s annual benchmarking surveys, but also from research conducted elsewhere to present an expansive view of the healthcare marketplace in which urgent care seeks to strengthen its presence. In this issue: What effect does the presence of a retail clinic have …
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