Legal

You turn over every stone to ensure your new hires are of the highest caliber not only clinically but as human beings. The vast majority of times, as in all urgent care businesses, your due diligence pays off. Then there’s the rare occasion when the horrific and unpredictable happens, as seen in a recent news story out of Fresno, CA. There, a male physician has been charged with five counts of various sex offenses against …

Visits that disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly made to urgent care centers and other healthcare facilities are making headlines as authorities work to prove 18 federal charges against him, ranging from kidnapping to sexual assault to producing and possessing child pornography. The latest bombshell in the years-long investigation is that Kelly may have exposed his victims to sexually transmitted diseases in the course of his alleged assaults. To that end, investigators have obtained records from …

A woman presented to an urgent care center in Santa Fe, NM to have pain and bruising in her chest checked out after she took a fall. X-rays showed now evidence of fractures or contusion, so the woman was given a prescription for pain medication and released, with no instructions for follow-up care. Return trips to the same urgent care center followed suit. Months later, after visiting another healthcare provider, she was diagnosed with lung …

An urgent care center in Pecos County, Texas is finding out the hard way that not knowing the details of your employees’ histories is a recipe for disaster. A physician assistant working at the clinic has had his license temporarily (for now) suspended after being indicted by a grand jury on one count of aggravated sexual assault on a child. It’s alleged that the offense took place before he was hired, during a wellness exam …

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 …