Clinical

Public health officials in numerous states, most notably California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey are reporting significant flu activity—some exceeding even last year’s severe flu season. California has seen a relatively high number of deaths (42) for this point in the season. Roughly half of those have Top of Formoccurred in the elderly. Flu has been called “widespread” in New Jersey, to the extent that some hospitals there are imposing restrictions on people visiting hospitals. AtlantiCare …

Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine are enlisting clinicians, patients, caregivers, and schools to help evaluate Emory’s own TBI Evaluation and Management (TEaM) Toolkit, with the intention of rolling it out to health systems ultimately. The toolkit was devised to boost recovery in children with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). The aim of the Emory study will be to show that validated “clinical practice and education for patients, caregivers, clinical providers and schools is …

Urgent care providers wrestle with decisions about antibiotic prescribing every day. It’s not made any easier by patients who plead for a script, either. Some guidance, or at least validation, might be drawn from a new Viewpoint piece published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, however. It analyzes concepts put forth by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, identifying four “moments” in which clinicians should ask themselves certain questions about each patient’s …

Cases of vaccine-preventable diseases continue to pile up across the country, with Oregon and Washington being the latest states to report outbreaks of measles. One of the affected children in Washington, whose immunization status was unknown, was diagnosed at an urgent care center in Vancouver in late December. Public health officials in both states are publicizing locations where patients with measles visited in order to encourage people they may have come in contact with to …

Every October (or earlier), the call goes up that it’s time for patients to get their annual flu shot. Urgent care providers are inundated with messages from all corners of healthcare, pleading with them to vaccinate as many people as time and patient preference allows. Advances in artificial intelligence could put a stop to that at some point, however. No, it can’t program patients to follow your advice by getting immunized. Rather, as noted in …

Cases of multidrug-resistant Salmonella infections have increased nearly 32% across 26 states and the District of Columbia over the past 6 weeks, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC and public health officials in some affected states have traced the cases back to raw turkey products. Urgent care providers should be vigilant for patients presenting with nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever, chills, headache, or blood in …

Print issues of JUCM, as well a coverage in JUCM News, have offered insights into the role urgent care can play in improving antibiotic stewardship across the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released data on the potential for devastating consquences: 23,000 Americans die annually from antibiotic-reisstant infections every year. Given the greater frequency with which patients seek an antibiotic prescription in urgent care centers, you are in an ideal position …

The appearance of a tick native to eastern Asia and Korea in the U.S. has alarmed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enough that the agency issued a formal report on it this week. Several factors make the tick newsworthy: The fact that the Asian longhorned tick has been found in Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Connecticut, Arkansas and West Virginia indicates that global travel and climate change are likely to bring …

The odds are that the most outrageous concerns patients present with can be easily explained away, and often to the patient’s satisfaction (and relief). That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look into them, though. Take the tale of a Gila Lyons, a writer who happens to have (and who has written extensively about) anxiety and panic disorders. For some time she experienced ringing in her ears, accompanied by a “prickly tickle” as she described it in …

Women who have been victims of domestic violence or abuse are more than twice as likely to ask for emergency contraception in a visit to a healthcare provider, according to a new study published in the British Journal of General Practice. The authors say their results are in line with similar research conducted in other countries. While this latest study focused on primary care providers, pharmacists, and sexual health practitioners in the U.K., it stands …