Practice Management
Click Here to download the article PDF Urgent message: Food, drug, and mass retailers continue to explore the healthcare space and seek profitable ways to leverage their massive footprints. As they shift their strategies in favor of primary care, especially for Medicare populations, they are relinquishing control of the transactional health market to urgent care. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is President of Experity Consulting and is Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care …
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Click Here to download the article PDF If urgent care had a family tree, it would show an ancestry rich in physicians with a pioneer spirit—individuals who wanted to find a way of practicing medicine that they believed to be more sensible, efficient, and economical while still offering excellent clinical care. Based on the decades that followed, up through today and beyond it’s safe to say the “experiment” has been an unqualified success.This is not …
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Click Here to download the PDF. Urgent message: In December 2022, Congress passed the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act (W-Waiver), which would remove federal patient caps and allow any healthcare provider with a standard DEA controlled-medication license to prescribe buprenorphine. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine and President of Experity Consulting. For over a decade, the question of whether or not to prescribe buprenorphine/naloxone (Suboxone) products in urgent …
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Urgent message: Urgent care operators must be mindful of costs and labor efficiency to navigate the challenges of rising and falling revenue in what’s been a highly seasonal business. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, is President of Experity Consulting and is Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. For much of 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic drove both uncertainty and higher volumes (and thus profits) to urgent care centers. With the 2022-2023 …
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Urgent message: Urgent care operators of all sizes are poised for continued growth in 2023. In this post-COVID environment, look to shifting de novo ownership trends, a slowing of health system activity, and independent entrepreneurs regaining their courage as the driving factors. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc The COVID-19 pandemic is no longer the primary driver of decision-making for urgent care operators. While its impact over the past few years cannot be understated, other factors …
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Urgent message: While the term “triage” refers to one distinct step in emergency department throughput, in urgent care the concept encompasses a series of activities that span queuing, registering, intake, and the physical exam. Given the clinical and legal implications of the term, including who legally can triage, the term should be avoided in most urgent care settings. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc According to modern dictionaries, triage refers to the “assignment of degrees of …
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Urgent Message: Five trends will drive urgent care strategy in 2023, including its continued response to COVID-19, building bridges with the pediatric community, integration of urgent and primary care, integration of specialist services, and increased operational efficiency in response to staffing challenges. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is President of Experity Consulting and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. As we embark upon 2023, year of the “rabbit” in the …
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Urgent message: X-ray is an essential component of urgent care operations. Amid rising costs and staffing shortages, limited-scope x-ray techs may be a viable alternative to licensed radiology techs to perform imaging in the clinic. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc One of the unexpected changes we’ve seen come out of the COVID-19 pandemic is the difficulty urgent care centers face in hiring licensed radiologic technologists (RTs). Even hospitals struggle to hire, offering sign-on bonuses of …
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Urgent message: Founded by emergency medicine doctors on a mission to keep nonemergent patients out of the ED, urgent care has been forced by changes in reimbursement policies to emphasize high productivity and labor cost savings—ultimately leading to overall fewer procedures and thus a lower acuity level for urgent care centers. Benjamin Barlow, MD; Monte Sandler; Alan Ayers, MBA, MAcc The urgent care community has faced many challenges over the past several years. The largest …
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Urgent message: Demand for DOT-related services for truck drivers is soaring. Urgent care centers can augment traditional insurance-paid visits with B2B relationships while serving a historically unhealthy population. Alan A. Ayers is President of Experity Consulting and Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. The commercial trucking industry in the United States is massive (Table 1). The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) requires that all commercial motor vehicle drivers receive a physical every …
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