Practice Management
Rural areas of the United States have never been known for easy access to high-quality healthcare. There’s simply not enough incentive for health systems to plant roots where patients are few and far between, leaving residents to weigh whether a 2-hour car drive followed by a long wait in the emergency room is worth it for a sore throat or a laceration that may not even need stitches. The increased risk for poor outcomes is …
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News that the Food and Drug Administration authorized a second booster shot of COVID-19 vaccine (a fourth dose, in other words) for immunocompromised individuals and all Americans over 50 years of age did not receive nearly the same celebratory response as earlier announcements of vaccine availability. The prevailing sense among the public, and probably at least a few healthcare professionals, seems to be that whatever degree of protection they already have will suffice. A new …
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Though relatively rare, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) has struck fear in the hearts of families across the United States for years now. And in households where a child did recover from MIS-C, questions have abounded as to whether administering COVID-19 vaccine would provide protection from future problems with the virus or leave children at greater risk for severe outcomes. A study of children in Texas and Italy, however, suggests that there’s no additional …
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Multiple studies have shown mixed results regarding increased risk for myocarditis in people who’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19. Most recently, JUCM News shared that one study actually did reveal increased incidence of myocarditis among some people who got the COVID-19 shot, but there was insufficient evidence to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. Another month brings yet another study with a new perspective, however. This one, just published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows …
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Just a week after we shared the news that New York had become the 25th state to grant nurse practitioners full practice authority (FPA), Kansas has followed suit, tipping the scales to the majority of U.S. states now allowing NPs to deliver care without physician supervision. Proponents claim that broadening the types of healthcare providers authorized to provide care to patients independently also broadens access to healthcare—something that is badly needed in many communities across …
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A new mode of delivering certain drugstore goods is literally ready to take flight in the communities of Frisco and Little Elm, TX, as Walgreens is taking a flyer on drone service from Wing, a subsidiary of Google. There’s no doubt the initiative scores a lot of points as a novelty and on the convenience scale—the company claims items can be delivered within 10 minutes—but there are significant drawbacks. For one thing, only around 100 …
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Mask mandates continue to fall by the wayside across industries and states in the U.S., simultaneous with an uptick in the number of COVID-19 infections—led by the BA.2 variant at this point, but also fueled by yet another new variant being called BA.2.12.1. The New York State Department of Health, for one, has blamed BA.2.12.1 for a recent spike upstate. Public health officials there estimate that the latest version of the virus is up to …
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Proponents of telemedicine have reasoned that being able to see a healthcare provider virtually is more convenient and less expensive than trudging over to the closest emergency room, where a patient is likely to sit for hours and run up an astronomical bill for something simple like a sore throat. While the latter may be true (as urgent care professionals are well aware), a new study published by JAMA Network Open suggests that telehealth usage …
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It’s not uncommon to see healthcare workers described as being “on the frontlines” of battling the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a militaristic analogy that hits closer to home than one might appreciate at first. According to an article just published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the potential for moral injury among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic is very similar to rates seen in military veterans who saw action in post-9/11 conflicts. Based on …
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What at first appears paradoxical—that illicit drug use among U.S. adolescents was relatively stable between January 2010 and June 2021 while overdose deaths increased—has a perfectly rational, if disturbing, explanation according to a new research letter published by the Journal of the American Medical Association: It’s the substances themselves that make the difference. In 2010 30.2% of 10th graders admitted to using illicit drugs; by 2020 the figure was 30.4%, though by June 2021 only …
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