Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Inhaled Insulin Powder Approved For Use in Kids

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded approval for insulin inhalation powder for use in children and adolescents aged 6 and older living with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, according to the product manufacturer’s press release. Previously, the inhaled insulin was only approved for adults. The oral inhaler device and insulin inhalation powder deliver insulin into the bloodstream through the lungs, enabling rapid absorption of insulin into systemic circulation. Marketed as Afrezza, …

Urgent Care Visits Outpace Retail Clinic Visits

According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 27.6% of Americans had at least 1 visit to an urgent care center in 2024. By comparison, only 19% of Americans reported visiting a retail health clinic in 2024, suggesting urgent care is the clear setting of choice for on-demand care. Looking at the populations by age, adults ages 18–64 represented the largest portion of the total urgent care visits (28.9%). Children …

Outdated Regulations Hamper Urgent Care X-ray Services

Recently, the Rochester Regional Health system in New York discontinued on-site x-ray services at 2 urgent care centers and reallocated those radiology technologists (RTs) to other urgent cares in the system that have higher patient demand, according to a local news site. Such optimization strategies could become more common in urgent care, given the state-specific requirements for radiology staff and the RT shortages across the nation. The reallocations of staff and discontinuations of x-ray services …

Rhett Lankford Appointed AFC President

American Family Care (AFC) has announced the appointment of Rhett Lankford as president. In the role, Lankford will report to Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Morgan and help lead AFC’s ongoing expansion efforts. According to the announcement, Lankford brings more than 20 years of experience in healthcare operations and management services organizations (MSOs). Most recently, he served as senior vice president and general manager at NAPA Managed Services, where he oversaw anesthesia-MSO operations across hospitals, surgical …

Do Patients Read After Visit Summaries? Urgent Care Shows Best Engagement

After visit summaries (AVSs) are the main tool to communicate appropriate follow-up recommendations for patients after an episode of care, and for some providers in Medicare enhanced-payment contracts, the summaries are a requirement. Yet some clinicians might view the task of writing AVSs as a time-consuming burden, especially when patients may not even read their summaries. An analysis published in JAMA Network Open of more than 6.2 million ambulatory visits from June 1, 2018, to …

Circulatory Diseases Drive Higher Mortality in the U.S.

Compared with 17 other high-income countries, the United States had higher mortality rates from 1999–2022—adding up to 12.7 million excess deaths. Researchers found that annual excess deaths in the United States rose from 346,166 to 905,159 over the study period, as published in JAMA Network Open. By 2022, all-cause mortality rates were 1.38 times as high in the United States as in comparison countries. Circulatory diseases (eg, heart disease, hypertension, and stroke) were the leading …

AOM Treatment Shows No ‘Weekend Effect’

In a retrospective study from the pediatric emergency department (PED) at Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital in Israel, researchers evaluated whether children with uncomplicated acute otitis media (AOM) received different care on weekends vs weekdays (the “weekend effect”), knowing that community-based pediatric clinics are closed on weekends. The review, published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, included 288 children aged 6 months to 10 years who presented to the PED between 2017 and 2024. Overall, …

Physician Gender Pay Gap Has Little to Do With Area of Specialty

A survey of 10,865 full-time physicians found that in terms of total compensation, female physicians earn just 78 cents for each $1 that male physicians earn—a gender pay gap of 22%. In actual dollars, female physicians reported average annual compensation of $354,000, compared to the $463,000 for male physicians. The gap in pay among physicians is substantially wider than the gap recorded in other industries across the U.S. labor market, according to Merit Health, which …

Upper Respiratory Visits Associated With Inappropriate Antibiotics

Despite ongoing education and stewardship programs, inappropriate antibiotic prescribing is still common in high-income countries, especially for respiratory illnesses. A review of 12 observational studies from primary care settings in the United States, Europe, and Asia between 2021 and 2025, published in Cureus, found that when analyzing prescribing patterns by category, respiratory tract visits contributed to the largest overall share of inappropriate prescriptions—even when their rate of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing was not the highest. Reported …

Gonorrhea and Syphilis Cases Surge in Europe

Recent surveillance data shows that sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are rising across Europe, with gonorrhea and syphilis reaching their highest recorded levels in more than a decade. Cases have increased the most among men who have sex with men, although infections are also increasing among heterosexual men and women, according to analysis from the University of Minnesota. Health officials are especially concerned about the growing number of congenital syphilis cases, which are considered preventable with …

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