Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Update: The Civil Rights Act Applies to LGBTQ Employees; What Does This Mean for Urgent Care Centers?

Urgent message: The United States Supreme Court ruled recently that LGBTQ discrimination is prohibited under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Urgent care centers may cultivate a tolerant and diverse work environment while protecting themselves against claims of discrimination by adopting and consistently following policies related to hiring, evaluation, promotion, benefits, etc. for all employees. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal …

Check with Your State to See How Licensing Regulations May Have Changed Due to COVID-19

When President Trump declared a national state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services instituted changes in their licensure requirements, as detailed in the COVID-19 Emergency Declaration Health Care Providers Fact Sheet. While CMS is deferring to individual states on specifics—including on all staff licensure, certification, or registration—the agency is waving many requirements in order to allow healthcare facilities the freedom to make decisions based on the conditions …

HHS Eases Standards on Protected Health Information Amid COVID-19 Chaos

Patient confidentiality is rightly one of the cornerstones of the medical profession. If we want patients to be forthcoming, they need to feel confident that they can be completely open with their providers without their most private information being shared. However, when policies designed to protect patients instead become obstacles to administering care it’s time to take a hard look at those policies. That’s exactly what the Department of Health and Human Services has done …

Your Patient Said His Pain Was ‘Not That Bad.’ You May Be Liable if He Was Just Being Stoic

Some patients are more forthcoming than others when it comes to acknowledging pain, or how long a given symptom has been present. You should know, though, that there’s precedent for an urgent care provider being held liable for taking that at face value in a malpractice case. Just this week an urgent care center in Idaho was hit with a multimillion dollar judgment after being sued by a patient who had injured his back while …

Sometimes, Fighting City Hall (and Persistence) Works—for Your Business and Your Patients

Not along ago, we shared the story of a Grosse Pointe, MI urgent care operator that was losing patients due to an overflow parking situation in the retail center where they were located. They were allotted a certain number of spots according to the terms of their lease, but those spaces were too often used by patrons of a neighboring athletic facility. Beaumont Urgent Care thought putting up signs indicating which parking spaces were “theirs” …

Settlement Details EHR Moves to Influence Clinicians—Maybe You—to Prescribe Opioids

In weighing whether an opioid prescription was warranted for a given patient, it’s likely that you were guided one way or the other by your electronic health record system. If that system was linked to the $145 million settlement levied against Allscripts-owned Practice Fusion by the Department of Justice, you may have been duped into thinking writing for an opioid was warranted when it might not have been. Given that Practice Fusion describes its offerings …

If Patients Can’t Park Near Your Clinic, They Won’t Be YOUR Patients for Long

A little boy bangs his toe on the coffee table while chasing his cat around the house. He’s screaming bloody murder and his mom is convinced he’s broken a bone. It’s a scenario tailor-made for urgent care, so she drives immediately to your clinic—only to find the only parking spot is across the street, in the municipal lot. Be assured she’s not parking there; nor is she going to circle until something opens up. She’s …

Are You Doing Enough to Protect Your Clinicians? The Data Suggest ‘Probably Not’

Envision four actual nurses who work in your urgent care operation. You probably picture them smiling, or engaged in their jobs and providing care to patients. Now picture one of them being physically or verbally assaulted in the workplace—YOUR workplace. New data from the American Nurses Association suggest that’s a very real, and quantified, likelihood; workplace violence is so common that one out of four nurses acknowledges they’ve been the victim of assault of one …

Concussion Protocols Are Now Coming into Play Legally

The risk for concussion among young athletes is a constant concern that comes into sharper focus every fall, when young athletes don helmets and shoulder pads and head out on the gridiron. Now a former Idaho high school football player is taking his old school district to court, charging that he was told it was safe to get back out on the field just 2 weeks after being concussed back in 2017. The $300,000 suit …

Dismiss Potential Diagnoses Based on a Patient’s Age and You’re Inviting Death and Litigation

An Alabama urgent care center learned the hardest possible way that it’s a mistake to assume a young, healthy-appearing patient wouldn’t have a life-threatening condition in spite of worsening symptoms. The patient in question was a 20-year-old college student who first presented with shortness of breath, chest pain, headache, and sore throat. The diagnosis reached that day was bronchitis, for which she received a prescription for an antibiotic and advice to return if her symptoms …

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