Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Monkeypox Has Subsided. Now It’s Time to Watch for the Complications

An upsurge in cases of monkeypox earlier this year displaced mainstream media coverage of COVID-19—for a while, anyway. Now that new cases have slowed, that attention has shifted back to concerns for a resurgence of the pandemic and an accompanying increase in other respiratory viruses. Urgent care providers should be aware that certain complications of monkeypox linger, though, as noted in an article just published by JAMA Neurology. Such vigilance could actually aid in retrospective …

Doing Well by Doing Good in Your Communities

The community in which your urgent care business operates is probably full of residents who drive past your front door many times a week. Maybe they’ve never noticed, or have been visiting your competitor down the road when they have same-day needs to see a healthcare provider. It’s just as likely that some members of that same community are struggling to make ends meet or to put food on the table—literally. Thanksgiving and the approaching …

Better Antibiotic Stewardship May Start with Improving Diagnostic Stewardship

Urgent care as an industry has made a firm commitment to reducing inappropriate prescriptions for antibiotics. Most often, we picture a clinician resisting patient demands for a script even though they’re experiencing a viral respiratory infection or fighting the urge to write one just in case a culture comes back positive. According to a Medpage Today article based on data presented at IDWeek, a group of hospitals in Michigan found that taking a step back …

Is It Time for Urgent Care to Overcome Challenges to Offering Mental Health Services?

Urgent care has made its reputation on being able to offer a wide array of services for patients who don’t need to go to the emergency room but who shouldn’t wait days to go to a primary care practice. For reasons that are many (and valid), that has not extended to patients who need access to mental health services. Most obviously, it’s not what most urgent care centers were created to do, and so are …

Disparities Could Leave Some Patients at Greater Risk for Flu and Poor Outcomes This Year

With this flu season expected to be harsher than others in recent years, while respiratory syncytial virus and COVID-19 are also circulating widely, it will be especially important to ensure that as many Americans as possible are suitably vaccinated. Unfortunately, as was made clearer than ever during the height of the pandemic, some racial and ethnic groups are at greater risk for illness and poor outcomes during viral outbreaks. In fact, according to a new …

Follow-Up: ‘Tripledemic’ Worries May Be Well-Founded, and Realized Sooner Than Later

Just last week, we told you that unusually high cases of respiratory syncytial virus, added to existing concerns over COVID-19 and influenza season, have public health officials in the United States worrying about simultaneous epidemic-level surges of all three viruses. Already, data are pouring in from around the country, raising the alarm that what was first thought to be a potential near-future problem may be an actual present-day crisis. An article published in the Virginia …

Warning: Social Media Posts Don’t Have to Name Names in Order to Violate Patient Privacy

Optimistically, you could presume that urgent care employees get the urge to post about their shift on social media because they’re proud of the work they do. Or, they may just find certain cases newsworthy or to have a novel aspect that would be of interest to friends and followers. Most, if not all, would understand that identifying a patient by name would be unethical and illegal. An ugly legal case unfolding in Florida right …

With Rumored Merger, Walgreens May Be Inching Closer to Urgent Care Territory

Having already staked a solid claim to primary care by investing heavily in VillageMD and announcing its intention to build a thousand clinics within its pharmacies over the next 5 years, Walgreens is said to be looking at a merger with CityMD’s parent company Summit Health. Both Healthcare Dive and Bloomberg have reported that such a deal could be finalized within weeks, resulting in a company whose value would range from $5 billion and $10 …

Urgent Care Could Be the Answer to Shortfalls in the New Paxlovid Delivery Program

At first glance, Walgreens’ plan to partner with Uber and DoorDash to provide free delivery of Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir tablets; ritonavir tablets) for COVID-19 patients in underserved communities looks like a great plan that could be invaluable in warding off a winter surge. Look a bit deeper, though, and it’s unclear exactly how effective the plan will be. Most problematically, it presumes that those underserved communities have a Walgreens nearby and that the ride share and …

Low Staffing and High Demand Leave Retail Pharmacists—and Patients—in a Bind

Retail drugstore companies continue to ask pharmacists to perform more and higher-acuity services while, simultaneously, staffing issues are forcing them to reduce hours of operation and, with that, accessibility to patients. It seems clear there’s a chasm between corporate expectations and the training pharmacists have undergone in order to become the experts they are in pharmacology—which decidedly does not include conducting exams and diagnosing illness. A nonscientific review of mainstream media coverage indicates that nearly …

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