Clinical

Recognizing which patients with COVID-19 will require hospitalization has been something of a crapshoot unless one presents in obvious distress. That may be changing, however, thanks to a new tool that is purported to aid in predicting who is likely to end up in the hospital. As detailed in a new article published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the COVID-19 acuity score (CoVA) draws on demographic, clinical, radiographic, and medical history variables that assess …

Shortfalls in testing supplies—especially in urgent care centers—was a serious problem at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Anecdotal evidence suggests that one reason the virus spread so widely and quickly was that asymptomatic patients who didn’t know they were sick (and infectious) went about their business instead of quarantining. Supply chain issues have, largely, been ironed out so there’s no shortage of places to get tested. However, an article published …

PowerPoint Presentation Urgent care professionals recognized early on that patients were not seeking care for complaints they would have presented with before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now there are data backing up that belief. According to information gathered by the consulting firm Advisory Board, total urgent care center volumes dropped 50% in the spring. As you know, they’ve come back strong since then, although Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles reports that its urgent care locations are still …

PowerPoint Presentation “Two weeks” has come to be viewed as some kind of magic number for resolution of COVID-19 symptoms and risk for transmitting the virus to close contacts. That may be shortsighted for at least some patients, however. Something called post COVID-19 syndrome has been identified by physicians at the Mayo Clinic after recognizing that some patients continue to experience intense fatigue, headaches, and difficulty concentrating for weeks—or even months—after they’re deemed to be …

Suggestions that urgent care was any more responsible for overuse of antibiotics—and subsequent drug resistance—than other practice settings were largely blown out of proportion. For one thing, patients self-select urgent care over other settings when it seems evident that an antibiotic is needed, so it’s likely that urgent care providers see more patients who really do need a prescription. Clearly there are instances where one is given even though it’s not indicated, as well. As …

Having been lulled into a fall sense of safety when it came to children and COVID-19, it came as a shock to the general public when word started to spread about multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). It’s probably less shocking, but perhaps just as frightening, then, to learn that MIS appears to strike adults with the virus. The concern about this revelation—besides caring for the individual patient who’s affected—is that this has occurred under …

Since the COVID-19 pandemic really took hold in the U.S., there’s been a presumption that patients who were infected with and then recovered from the virus had protection against reinfection. We now know that’s not correct, however; patients can get COVID-19 more than once. So far, evidence indicates reinfection is rare—but there have been confirmed cases, the first one in the U.S. being a symptomatic 25-year-old, otherwise healthy, man who first tested positive on April …

Since March, there have been many conflicting reports, as well as actual studies, on how COVID-19 is transmitted, who is at greatest risk, and how the virus is transmitted. The length of time a patient is considered infectious has been the subject of ever-changing intel, as well. At one point, 6 days was thought to be the window; then it was 10, and then 14 days. Now the Journal of Infection has published a paper …

2020 has seen a new word introduced into the lexicon of healthcare in the United States. With the COVID-19 pandemic stretching on into the foreseeable future and coinciding with the advent of influenza season, public health experts are warning about a possible twindemic—simultaneous widespread outbreaks of both COVID-19 and flu. As such, there’s a lot of emphasis pushing flu shots harder than ever, especially in healthcare settings. According to a blog post by Alan Ayers, …

There was fear in some quarters that the shutdown of many businesses and inhibited social life due to the COVID-19 pandemic would ultimately lead to increasing rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide. For the most part, that has not come to fruition at this point. However, an article just released on JAMA Network Open indicates that alcohol consumption increased dramatically in the early months of social distancing. Quoting Nielsen data, the article reveals that …