Practice Management
Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc. have opted not to fight the decision a judge laid down to block their proposed merger based on the presumption that the $34 billion deal would violate antitrust laws. The two companies will continue to operate as separate entities, though the door is still open for either or both to seek other partners. Had the deal gone through, Aetna would have become a kingpin in Medicare Advantage. The implications for …
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Urgent message: When a patient says, ‘I had a bad experience,’ you should hear, ‘I know how you can improve your service.’ Adopt that mindset and you’ll start to welcome even negative feedback—and learn to use it to your advantage. Did you know there are some urgent care centers who live to get patient complaints? Before we delve into why you should adopt a similar mindset, let’s look at why an urgent care exists. In …
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The College of Healthcare Information Management (CHIME) has joined 15 other organizations in asking Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price to delay implementation of Stage 3 Meaningful Use and Certified EHR Technology requirements indefinitely. In a February 17 letter to Price, they stressed the importance of reducing regulatory burdens for physicians while “ensuring patients benefit from the best technology…and that the goal of a truly interoperable healthcare system comes to fruition.” The letter singled out …
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A telemedicine ambulance triage system is helping to keep nonemergent cases out of the emergency room in Houston—perhaps indicating one more way urgent care could contribute to improving access to affordable, quality care for patients with non–life-threatening concerns. A briefing on Advisory Board notes that the city’s ED wait times were among the worst in the country 10 years ago, thanks to up to 50% of patients, in effect, seeking primary care in their local …
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New data suggest that efforts to educate patients on when it’s appropriate to go to an urgent care center vs the emergency room need to continue, if not increase. Basically, the survey from CityMD shows too many are not selecting the appropriate setting for immediate care. More than 2,000 Americans 18 and older were asked which setting would be most appropriate for immediate care in eight separate scenarios, from having a child with a 104⁰ …
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Urgent care is a good fit for evolving healthcare marketplaces, ensuring continuing growth for years to come—from $23.5 billion in 2013 to a projected $30.5 billion by 2020, according to a new report from Transparency Market Research (TMR). We’ve told you here that urgent care has been shown to be a popular model for people in the millennial generation (often defined as those born between the mid-1980s and early 2000s), but TMR points out that …
Read MoreIt’s tax time again and that got me thinking. And thinking got me angry. And angry got me belligerent. And belligerent got me nowhere. So, I went back to thinking about it, and here’s my take: Taxes are the contributions we make to society and the government so that it functions reasonably well, preserves our fragile democracy, and supports those who need our help. Yet, as a physician in a primary care specialty, like many …
Read MoreOver two-thirds of urgent care centers offer a blend of occupational medicine services (generally defined as treatment of workers compensation injuries, conducting physicals for compliance or fitness for duty, and substance abuse testing), according to the Urgent Care Association.1 One challenge for those that do is that the overall incidence of workplace injuries has declined significantly this century, due to an overall shift from a manufacturing to a service and information economy, the offshoring/outsourcing of …
Read MoreClindamycin Reduces Resistance to Group A Strep Key point: Another use for clindamycin. Citation: Andreoni F, Zurcher C, Tamutzer A, et al. Clindamycin affects group A streptococcus virulence factors and improves clinical outcome. J Infect Dis. 2017;215(2):269-277. Necrotizing fasciitis is a life-threatening infection not frequently seen in the urgent care center, though it does occur. This article from the Infectious Diseases Society of America discusses the importance of adding clindamycin to the treatment regimen. No …
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