Legal

By and large, urgent care operators are very diligent when it comes to following the guidelines laid down in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996—much better knowns as HIPAA. However, even without malice aforethought, you may inadvertently stray into noncompliance, leaving your business open to serious penalties. Such was pointed out in a FierceHealth article that discussed ways it’s easy for medical providers in general to slip out of compliance; in fact, …

An urgent care company has agreed to pay $2 million to settle whistleblower allegations that it submitted inflated claims to Medicare and Medicaid programs—known as “upcoding”—over a 5-year period in two New England states. Specifically, the Department of Justice charged that the company ordered its clinicians to examine and document multiple, specific body systems while taking the medical histories and performing physical exams, whether that level of attention was warranted by the patients’ complaints or …

Urgent care centers as a whole go to great lengths to ensure their locations and facilities are accessible to all patients, regardless of any special needs they may have. It can be easy to overlook the employers’ responsibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to also provide accommodations that allow employees to do their jobs. One need look no further than a lawsuit in Virginia to be reminded, however. The case of a healthcare …

Are whistleblowers bottom feeders who betray their employers to make a buck, or crusaders for the public good, responsible for bringing to light corporate or government malfeasance? Whichever your answer, the fact is that whistleblower lawsuits, to which urgent care operations are clearly not immune, take a massive toll on both the whistleblower/complainant and the defendant in the suit. The majority of cases involve healthcare, with Medicare fraud being an especially rich field (probably not …

The National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) was created to record malpractice payments, disciplinary action, restrictions of privileges, and other red flags for physicians who may be less likely to provide excellent care for others. Unfortunately, as with any solution to a real problem, it’s not perfect. Providers with poor records may not get flagged in spite of past transgressions. That can present a real problem when you’re trying to hire clinical staff in a hurry. …

No responsible urgent care operator would knowingly employ a clinician whose history included behavior that put patients at risk, whether that meant irresponsible prescribing, claims of inappropriate behavior, or just plain incompetence. Unfortunately, just checking that a job candidate’s CV is on point and verifying references isn’t sufficient if someone has something to hide. A new report produced by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, USA Today, and MedPage Today tells the tale of a surgeon who …

Medical practices—including urgent care centers—are the sites of financial crimes far more often than they should be. From sloppy bookkeeping to outright embezzlement, the consequences of not minding the books closely could be catastrophic for your business and your reputation. Let us interrupt you from thinking It couldn’t happen to me by suggesting that you read on. One of the largest urgent care operators in the country just saw a former manager get sentenced to …

Sexual harassment is a “chronic debilitating disease” in healthcare settings—and it needs to be treated as such, according to a pair of Perspective articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. As one of them points out, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine issued a report stating that up to 50% of female medical students will experience some form of sexual harassment before they even get out of med school. The morality (or …

There’s no question that positive reviews on social media can help drive new patients to your urgent care center. The counterpoint to that is that negative reviews have the potential to keep even formerly satisfied customers from returning. Things have escalated beyond simple comments online in the case of a Michigan healthcare facility and a family that was unhappy with the care they received. That family first aired its grievances over the care one family …