Practice Management
The patient is an 8-year-old girl who is brought to your urgent care center by her father, who reports his daughter has had a sore throat and a fever for “a few days.” Most recently, a petechial rash has appeared, spreading from her head and neck down to her torso. She also started complaining of nausea. The father also observes that her tongue appears redder than usual. View the image and consider what your diagnosis …
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Urgent message: Kaposi sarcoma is considered an AIDS-defining illness with variable locations of presentation. Proper diagnosis of lesions can allow patients to seek out necessary care for potentially serious pathologies. Brad White, DO, Susannah Boulet, OMV-IV, William Billari, OMS-IV, and Jennifer Lee, OMS-IV Introduction Skin lesions and abscesses are common and often relatively benign findings that a physician may not deem serious enough for further investigation. However, as first-line providers, it is critical for urgent …
Read MoreOn November 1, 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) confirmed with the final rule for 2020 that they have accepted all of the American Medical Associations (AMA) recommendations for coding of office and outpatient evaluation and management (E/M) services starting in 2021. This will offer some documentation relief for providers who have been held to dated 1995 and 1997 guidelines that were written before the use of electronic medical records. However, these …
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The patient is a 50-year-old man who presents with foot pain at the site of a right-foot amputation. He has a history of chronic renal disease, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension. View the ECG taken and consider what the diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the next page.
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It’s widely recognized that while freestanding emergency rooms are perfectly good places to go for walk-in care, the cost associated with that care is exorbitant compared with urgent care (and even more so compared with primary care or retail clinics). The problem is compounded by the fact that many patients who visit freestanding EDs think they’re walking into an urgent care center and are later hit with surprise bills. A new study in Academic Emergency …
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With the decade about to come to a close, Crain’s Health Pulse considered what some of the biggest healthcare stories of the 2010s were—concluding that the ongoing “rise of urgent care” is significant among them. A Look Back at the 2010s: The Rise of Urgent Care notes that what made the period of 2010–2019 so good for urgent care as a business model is likely to spur further growth in 2020 and beyond. Where evolving …
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Urgent care figures prominently in one Florida county’s efforts to curb excessive emergency room spending while also educating patients on how to choose the best setting for what ails them. A review of their 2018–2019 fiscal year told Volusia County, Florida officials that residents had an expensive habit: calling 911 when they didn’t have a way to get to a doctor’s office or going to the emergency room for relatively minor illness and injuries. The …
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Children (and even some adults) put things in their mouths that don’t belong there—and sometimes they wind up being swallowed or inhaled. That risk may be especially high as holiday gifts are explored and batteries fall into small hands. The next free webinar offered by JUCM will feature Hansel Otero, MD, director of international pediatric radiology education and outreach at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia sharing real-life cases (and accompanying x-rays) of patients with foreign bodies …
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We told you recently that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised its estimate of the number of American who die every year from an antibiotic-resistant infections (from the long-held total of 23,000 to around 35,000 deaths). Just last week, however, the CDC revealed that the actual number is thought to be 44,000 deaths annually, out of 3 million people who become ill with resistant infections. At the same time, though, prevention efforts like …
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Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s Eve and Day move many people to embrace religious and cultural festivities with family and friends. For those who are isolated, experiencing a downturn in their life experience, or struggling with mental or emotional illness, however, the winter holidays usher in additional risk for suicide. While the overall trend for suicides in the U.S. is concerning—suicide rates increased 25.4% between 1999 and 2016—January continues to be the month in which …
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