Practice Management
You just can’t beat Amazon when it comes to stocking items on the back-to-school list once everything’s been sufficiently picked over at Staples and Walmart. The company has tried in various ways to capitalize on its good name in entering the healthcare marketplace, to no avail. Now they’re trying a different tactic: buying an already established concern. The virtual retail colossus announced a $3.9 billion deal to take over One Medical and its 125 brick-and-mortar …
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JUCM noted some time ago that the COVID-19 pandemic has been taking a toll on urgent care workers (see The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Making Burnout Worse for Physicians Already in Crisis). Now a new report published by JAMA Network Open is providing data bearing that out—along with a possibly surprising nuance. Childcare challenges and other issues related to the pandemic have amounted to increased stress and burnout, leaving an ever-growing number of healthcare providers looking …
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You want the best, most reliable clinicians for your patients. And their performance is essential to your future success. There’s more to capability than experience and clinical skill, however, and there could be red flags in an otherwise stellar candidate’s past that they’d be unlikely to mention in an interview. The headlines out of Clallam County, Washington offer a bracing reminder of that as an emergency room physician there has been arrested and charged with …
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JUCM News first alerted readers to rising cases of monkeypox in May. At the time, the news from around the world was more of an oddity than a cause for concern. The novelty has now worn off, however, as the World Health Organization just upgraded the status of monkeypox to an official global health emergency. As noted in The New York Times, the global caseload now exceeds 16,000 in 75 countries. This is a rare …
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For the first time in almost a decade, someone has been diagnosed with polio in the United States. Per a report from CNN, it’s suspected that the virus identified in the Rockland County, New York man originated in another country. While he himself had not traveled internationally recently, it’s believed that he was infected by an individual who was vaccinated with the oral vaccine still used in some areas of the world. (The U.S. stopped …
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JUCM News readers are well aware that there’s been tremendous merger-and-acquisition activity in the urgent care marketplace in 2022—and it’s certainly not cooling off in the midsummer period. Most recently, WellNow Urgent Care acquired Physicians Immediate Care and its 55 urgent care and occupational medicine facilities in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. That brings the total number of WellNow centers to 128 in six states. And Fast Pace Health just completed its previously announced investment in …
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Too many patients assume that a supplement labeled as “natural” is unlikely to cause possibly dangerous side effects. That risk is compounded when the person taking the supplement is a child. The potential for negative side effects and toxicity is underscored in an article just published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. In it, the authors cite data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing a 530% increase in pediatric melatonin …
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Around 60 million Americans live in areas defined as “rural,” with local hospitals being the most viable option for care—assuming they can find one. That’s getting increasingly difficult, however, as illustrated in an article just published by Becker’s Hospital Review. Since 2011, 76 rural hospitals have shut down across the country, leaving too many patients in a precarious position when it comes to their healthcare. Texas leads the way with 15 closures, but 21 other …
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A quick look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 tracker reveals that new cases have been rising slowly for more than a month, with hospitalization rates rising even more steadily. Some cities, such as Chicago, are raising their official warning levels to “high.” Los Angeles is looking at reinstituting a mask mandate for indoor spaces. What’s missing is the widespread sense of crisis, or even panic, that has gripped previous surges in …
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A new rule (effective July 1) from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services now requires health insurance and self-insured employers to post the rates they’ve negotiated with providers. While that could mean unprecedented public access to what was previously eyes-only for insurance industry insiders, the catch is that data posted as *.json (JavaScript Object Notation) files can only be machine-read—essentially making the data inaccessible to all but academics and professionals. So, Alan Ayers, MBA, MAcc, …
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