Industry

The Urgent Care Association and the College of Urgent Care Medicine have launched a new initiative to formally acknowledge urgent care operators who demonstrate compliance with the Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Antibiotic Stewardship Commendation program is intended to encourage urgent care centers to become more proactive in their antibiotic stewardship efforts. Using evidence-based recommendations for diagnosis and management, participating urgent care operators can design …

The need to be “everywhere all the time” has become something of a mantra in healthcare, according to the latest Overview of the Salaries, Bonuses, and Other Incentives Customarily Used to Recruit Physicians, Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners, compiled and presented by Merritt Hawkins. The report spotlights the growth of urgent care, specifically, along with other walk-in settings as a key influencer in changing patient expectations when they choose a healthcare provider. Secondary to that, …

Readers of JUCM News may recall that the World Health Organization officially declared burnout to be a “workplace phenomenon” recently. Now a study conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists reveals something that is arguably even more alarming: 74% of Americans—your patients—are worried that the healthcare providers treating them could be suffering from burnout. An even higher percentage (80%) believe that burnout diminishes the quality of care an …

First, the irrefutable statistics: The percentage of primary care positions filled by fourth-year medical students this year was the lowest ever (41%), according to the 2019 National Resident Matching Program. Given that this year also saw the highest number of primary care openings on record (8,116), the potential for a serious shortfall is more than evident. For purposes of categorizing subspecialties, the Match considers “primary care” to encompass internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatrics—notably, not …

Some “experts” in both the insurance and healthcare industries may have been skeptical when UnitedHealth Group’s Optima division bought MedExpress a few years ago. Others predicted that the insurance giant would likely look for ways to deliver deeper healthcare services to their own plan members. They were right. MedExpress is now the largest urgent care chain in the country. UHG expects even bigger things to come, however—projecting that MedExpress will help push its OptumCare medical …

According to a new report from Definitive Healthcare, industry consolidation and consumerism are the two hottest trends among healthcare companies in the United States—both of which, as we know, also reflect the growth and attributes of the urgent care business. The third most-mentioned trends, the rise of telehealth, is becoming a hot topic in urgent care circles, as well. Industry consolidation was the most-mentioned response (25% of the 1,000 healthcare leaders in the provider, biotech, …

We’ve all heard how the infamous, impending physician shortage will make efficient delivery of quality care more challenging than ever before. As we’ve told you, those concerns are actually influencing the evolution of urgent care—for example, leading operators to consider greater utilization of advanced-practice providers. Interestingly, a new post on Advisory Board turns the whole issue on its ear by asking the question, “does America have a physician shortage—or are our doctors ‘just bad at …

As we told you last month, the private equity firm Warburg Pincus had big plans to merge DocuTAP and Practice Velocity, the two leading technology and services companies serving the urgent care marketplace. That goal has now been realized in the form of Experity, whose mission will be to continue to support and invest in all the current software platforms and services previously provided by the merging companies while offering customers—some 4,000 clinics across the …

For the first time ever in the United States, the number of physicians who are employed by someone else is greater than the number of self-employed physicians, according to new data from the American Medical Association. Overall, 47% of all physicians were employees in 2018, up 6% since the last time the AMA did similar research in 2012—compared with 46% who described themselves as “self-employed” in a clinical setting. It’s part of an overall trend …

The growing authority—and employment—of physician assistants and nurse practitioners in many practice settings demonstrates the practical need for high-level clinicians who cost less to employ than physicians. You can engage more of them than you can physicians, per dollar. That helps the operation run more smoothly without breaking the bank, theoretically. As PAs and NPs, known collectively as advanced-practice providers (APPs), grow in stature, however, a movement is afoot to free them from the bonds …