Practice Management
Patients visiting Lanier Urgent Care in Gainesville, GA are asked the usual questions upon arrival—plus one that’s very atypical: You wanna see the dogs? According to the centers practice administrator, 90% of patients answer “Yes!” to that question. Lanier has a pair of canines on site every day, though one of them will likely be departing to spend time in Lanier’s soon-to-open second location. Dr. Ronald Perry, president of Lanier, says the dogs have a …
Read MoreCase A 14-year-old boy presents to urgent care complaining of lateral right elbow pain that began after a fall on the playground yesterday, in which he landed on his outstretched hand. He has no significant medical or surgical history. The elbow pain is worse with range of motion. He denies any wrist or shoulder pain, and there is no head trauma. There are no paresthesias to the hand or arm. View the images taken (Figures …
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Urgent message: The incidence of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is seasonal in nature, with a peak during the winter months and a trough in the summer months. In the urgent care setting, primary concerns are risk factors for CAP, as well as current treatment and testing guidelines. Overview Pneumonia is an acute alveolar lung infection that presents with infiltrates upon chest imaging and is often accompanied by fever, cough, sputum production, shortness of breath, and physical …
Read MoreQ: Can you bill for splint and cast applications done by someone on staff other than the physician? A: Yes, you can still bill for the service if the application is performed by someone else in the clinic. The American Medical Association (AMA) provided guidance on this in the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Assistant, April 2002 issue: “You will note that the reference to ‘physician’ has been retained in the clinical examples provided. This inclusion …
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Urgent message: Recognizing the need for workup and referral in patients, even if their symptoms are relatively common, is crucial for optimal outcomes Introduction Abdominal symptoms can be attributed to a wide array of causes. When etiology is not immediately apparent, searching for signs and symptoms the patient may not have reported—or even be aware of—may be the first steps toward timely diagnosis and treatment. In this case, the abdominal symptoms were ultimately due to …
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Urgent message: Travel medicine is a service addition that enables urgent care operators to attract more patients and increase revenue from existing patients while leveraging existing infrastructure and personnel. When an urgent care center’s patient revenues exceed operating expenses, the operation is said to have achieved break-even profitability—at which point each incremental patient visit contributes directly to the bottom line. Nevertheless, in the face of rising fixed costs and falling payer reimbursements, many centers still …
Read MoreEarlier Return to Activities May Benefit Concussed Children Key point: Another (possibly surprising) view on rest after concussion. Citation: Grool AM, Aglipay M, Momoli F. Association between early participation in physical activity following acute concussion and persistent postconcussive symptoms in children and adolescents. JAMA. 2016;316(23):2504-2514. In this prospective, multicenter cohort study, approximately 2,400 children aged 5-18 years with acute concussion diagnosed at nine emergency departments across Canada were evaluated for persistent postconcussive symptoms (PPCS). Each …
Read MoreUrgent message: The “in office ancillary services exception” to the Stark law enables urgent care centers to offer a range of services in-house, but complications arise when the urgent care operation consists of multiple locations. Urgent care centers are almost certainly familiar with the Stark law, a federal conflict-of-interest statute designed to help curb physician self-referral. It is a particularly exacting regulation, but there are numerous exceptions that may help healthcare providers avoid liability—the common …
Read MoreA Practice Velocity study of 63,000 patient charts presenting with one of 35 diagnoses associated with sexually transmitted infections (STI) between January 2010 and November 2016 reveals the highest incidence occurs during the late summer/early autumn. With urgent care’s typical seasonality driven by upper respiratory illness, which is most prevalent in the winter months, STI presentations actually run contra-seasonal to “typical” urgent care volume.
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GoHealth Urgent Care is going to open 15 new urgent care centers cobranded with Hartford HealthCare over the next 18 months. Hartford says it will benefit by bringing in a greater number of patients, by virtue of having more access points. GoHealth will have the benefit of technology standards like “smart glass” procedure rooms, mobile x-ray equipment, and a broader, unified electronic health records system. The partnership will also increase GoHealth’s visibility in central and …
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