Practice Management
The urgent care industry continues to add de novo centers, according to data from Experity and National Urgent Care Realty. Although de novo growth slowed in 2023 by 5%, 2023 de novos are still 16% higher than 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. In addition to continued overall growth of the industry, the data indicates structural changes in who is opening de novos. A “de novo” urgent care refers to a center that did not previously …
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Benjamin Barlow, MD; Phyllis Dobberstein, CPC, CPMA, CPCO, CEMC, CCC One of the biggest challenges facing urgent care operators is increased scrutiny in the form of payer reviews. More clients than ever are facing these administrative and financial burdens. Compounding the issue is that urgent care clinicians often struggle to understand coding guidelines and how to document in a way that shows their medical decision making, which is vital in care and in payer reviews. Prepayment …
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Phyllis Dobberstein, CPC, CPMA, CPCO, CEMC, CCC One of the biggest challenges for an urgent care is billing insurance as a non-participating provider. When opening a new practice or adding a clinic, completed credentialing and contracting is essential and has a direct impact on the overall success for a new business. Opening without effective dates may result in cash flow shortages due to the fact that most health plans will not offer retroactive effective dates. Additionally, …
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“Driving Change” is our overarching convention theme that we build on each year. When you are busy Driving Change in healthcare delivery, there aren’t a lot of breaks. In just the normal day-to-day of Urgent Care, you are anticipating, meeting, and exceeding the needs of your patients. You are doing the same for your occupational medicine employer customers. You are doing the same for your colleagues. You are doing the same for your strategic partners. …
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Alan A. Ayers, MBA, Macc Urgent Message: Urgent care is a consumer-driven phenomenon, and physician entrepreneurs continue to evolve the delivery of urgent care services in response to changing consumer preferences, both inside and beyond the brick-and-mortar facility. Citation: Ayers A. Thinking outside the box to bring urgent care to the patient. J Urgent Care Med. 2024;18(4): 31-33. While unregulated by most states, the term “urgent care” historically has come to mean a base offering …
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In late November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted that the number of healthcare visits related to influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was particularly high among children, causing concern in communities about this “tripledemic” of respiratory illness. According to Experity data, the first week of October ushered in flu season for urgent care, when positivity rates for the three viruses among all urgent care center visits began to rise.1 Since …
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Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Urgent Message: Whether an urgent care center should be open 365 days per year or close on major or minor holidays depends upon factors that influence profitability such as patient demand, competitive positioning, staff availability, payer reimbursement, and the branding impact of after-hours accessibility. As urgent care operators look to the coming holiday season and begin their strategic planning for the new year, many are faced with the question of …
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Same-day ambulatory healthcare services are the hallmark of urgent care (UC). Because UC clinicians care for a wide range of conditions and injuries, they need to be proficient in a broad scope of immediate intervention services. In its latest white paper, the Urgent Care Association (UCA) noted that more organizations are moving to a staffing model with nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) serving as the primary providers on-site, rather than physicians. This model grew …
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A recurring issue for healthcare practitioners is the frequency with which they find themselves contemplating whether a patient encounter should be classified as a level 3 or level 4 office visit. With a staggering 79% of ambulatory patient visits falling within these categories, this query has become exceedingly common among providers. Complicating matters further, the coding guidelines from the American Medical Association (AMA) contain gray areas that can contribute to additional confusion.[1] This article aims …
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I have a story I want to share with you, but I’m finding it hard to do without it reeking of privilege. This is a story about feeling 100% welcomed in one place when you don’t feel that way in many others. This is a rare for me, and perhaps it will feel like a poor example to you. Yet, it is part of my lived experience and brought something home for me that made …
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