Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Is Your Urgent Care Ready for the 2026 ADA Mandate?

Urgent Message: Urgent care facilities must ensure their medical diagnostic equipment and staff training protocols meet new ADA accessibility standards by the July 8, 2026, deadline. Key Words: Americans with Disabilities Act; Medical Diagnostic Equipment; Accessible Exam Tables; Staff Training; Urgent Care Compliance Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Ensuring equal access to healthcare services isn’t just a goal, it’s a legal mandate. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)1 assures everyone has equal access to healthcare …

Commercial Reimbursement In Urgent Care

While examining 17,410,492 commercially insured visits in the Experity EMR from November 1, 2024, through October 31, 2025, we calculated zero-balance net revenue per visit (NRV) for urgent care by state. NRV represents total payments from both patients and insurers when the claim is closed, and it includes evaluation/management and ancillary codes. Data include commercial plans and third‑party managed Medicaid and Medicare but exclude self-pay, workers’ compensation, employer-paid services, motor vehicle accidents, and traditional Medicare …

Urgent Care Testing For Chlamydia and Gonorrhea

About three-quarters of urgent care centers test for C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae (CT/NG) infections either in-house or by sending out, but utilization lags. Here’s why it matters. An Urgent Care Consultants analysis of 90,856,421 visits charted in the Experity EMR (January 1, 2022–September 13, 2025) shows adoption has broadened since the previous analysis.1 Across visits in all clinics, only about 1% included a CT/NG test, while the top-decile clinics test in roughly 4–5% of …

The Case for a Generative AI Acceptable Use Policy in Urgent Care

Urgent Message: Banning generative artificial intelligence can create a culture of secretive use that presents potential risks for legal liability, clinical harm, and degradation of reputation. Key Words: Generative Artificial Intelligence; Protected Health Information; HIPAA; Clinical Decision-Making Across urgent care centers, many clinicians are experimenting with generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The trend is measurable, not anecdotal. The American Medical Association reports that 2 in 3 physicians used AI in 2024—a stunning rise from 38% …

Highlights From SERUCA 2025: AI, Burnout, and The New Front Line of Care

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, President of Urgent Care Consultants and Senior Editor of JUCM. The Southeast Regional Urgent Care Association (SERUCA) 2025 conference, held November 14–15, 2025, in New Orleans, focused on urgent care’s most pressing challenges: technology, workforce well-being, and clinical quality through stewardship. This article highlights key takeaways for operators, vendors, and clinicians. Promoting Clinical Excellence Through Stewardship Stewardship was a recurring theme. In a session on antibiotic use, Steven Goldberg, MD, …

What Does ‘Standard of Care’ Mean from a Legal Compliance Perspective?

Urgent Message: Urgent care centers are not required to deliver the “best possible care” but rather an “acceptable” level of care, which is legally defined as the “standard of care.” Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Key Words: Standard of Care, Medical Malpractice, Medical Negligence, Legal Compliance, Disciplinary Action Medical malpractice occurs when a physician’s actions, or failure to act, during patient care don’t meet accepted medical standards and cause harm to the patient. To be …

The Scale of Orthopedic Urgent Care

As of August 12, 2025, there are 726 orthopedic urgent care (OUC) rooftops in the United States, according to National Urgent Care Realty and Urgent Care Consultants. Based on centers added since January 1, 2025, the estimated annual rooftop growth for 2025 is 10.9%. The charts highlight the market’s structure: Most sites operate without hospital affiliation, and OUC is largely a scaled, multisite business rather than single-location clinics. Only 9% of OUC rooftops are single …

What is an Urgent Care Operator’s Liability Concerning Trash Disposal?

Urgent Message: Medical and non-medical waste produced by urgent care centers must be handled in accordance with federal, state, and local regulations. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that garbage is public property once it is set on the curb.1 The Supreme Court opined that “[i]t is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members …

My AI Journey and Practical Lessons You Can Use Now

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc My artificial intelligence (AI) awakening wasn’t a lightning bolt but a slow current—a series of small jolts. I kept encountering people who seemingly talked about AI all the time—fluent in the lingo and referred to by others as “AI gurus.” From their conversations, it was clear they were putting AI into real operations—analyzing data, streamlining tasks, even building custom AI tools and agents. But it was still as if they …

Credit Card on File Speeds Collections, Decreases Bad Debt

The credit-card-on-file practice requires a patient’s credit card at the time of service, which is used to cover balances after an insurance claim adjudicates. In addition to increasing total collections, charging the card on file also enables an urgent care to capture payments more quickly than time-consuming and costly collection efforts, such as mailing statements. In an Experity analysis of 392,699 comparable Blue Cross Blue Shield urgent care visits in 2024, 80% of patient responsibility …

« Previous

Login to JUCM