Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Update: Be Alert for New Conditions Added to the COVID-19 ‘High-Risk’ List

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added several new chronic conditions to the list of those thought to predispose people with COVID-19 to severe illness. Several—type 1 diabetes, moderate-to-severe asthma, liver disease, dementia or other neurological conditions, stroke/cerebrovascular disease, HIV infection, cystic fibrosis, and overweight—were previously considered those that “might” put patients at higher risk. Substance use disorders, which hadn’t been considered to put people at higher risk at all, are now also considered …

Are You Being Fairly Reimbursed for Testing or Vaccinating the Uninsured for COVID-19?

Whether or not you’ve participated in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ program to cover the cost of administering COVID-19 tests to uninsured patients to date, take note that HHS is extending the program to include vaccination. The agency is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, April 13 at 2 pm, Eastern to explain the steps for using the program, including how to enroll as a provider participant, check patient eligibility, submit patient information …

Keep Pressing Patients to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine—Your Efforts Are Paying Off

If you’re among the many urgent care providers who encourage patients to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or try to educate patients who have concerns about the shot, those efforts seem to be making a dent in people’s attitudes. The percentage of Americans who have either gotten at least one dose of the vaccine or who now plan to is growing, according to new data released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The biggest jump was seen …

Just Because a Substance is ‘Banned’ Doesn’t Mean Your Patient Isn’t Suffering Its Ill Effects

Many substances purported to help boost workouts by giving the user more energy or helping to speed development of muscle mass have been the subject of warnings or outright bans by health departments at the state and federal levels in the United States. That doesn’t mean they’re not available, however, as underscored in a study published recently in Clinical Toxicology. The authors found that 17 brands of over-the-country supplements available online in the U.S. contained …

Could Refocusing on Respiratory Hygiene Be a Cure for Pandemic Fatigue?

People are sick of wearing masks, wiping down their grocery carts, and sanitizing their hands every time they even think of touching a doorknob—so much so that there’s widespread rebellion against what we’ve come to view as basic hygiene practices in the time of COVID-19. We see evidence of this on the nightly news and social media throughout the day. What if we eased the “rules” a little, though—not because we’re bowing to people’s impatience …

Urgent Care Is Adapting to Current Conditions at a Breakneck Pace. Are You Keeping Up?

The past year has brought nonstop changes in how Americans live their daily lives. What used to be typical behavior became foolhardy. People stopped going to doctors for nonemergent complaints to a large extent, with urgent care suffering downturns in patient volume (temporarily, though some practices are still trying to catch up). Bearing that in mind, the Urgent Care Association, of which JUCM is the official publication, in the interest of full disclosure, has adapted …

Patients Have Questions About What They ‘Can’ Do Post Vaccination. Now You Have Answers

As of this writing, nearly 17% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. Millions more have received at least one of the two doses they’ll need for full protection or are waiting for full protection to “kick in.” All told at this point, roughly 150 million Americans have some degree of protection. There are probably nearly that many who have a lot of questions about what they should or shouldn’t …

Reported Child Abuse Is Down, but Deaths Are Up. What Can Urgent Care Do?

What on the surface could appear to be good news may actually be obscuring a clearer picture of how the pandemic is affecting children in an unexpected way. Reports of suspected child abuse have dropped—dramatically—over the past year or so, according to an article from the Associated Press. At the same time, however, the AP’s review of records in Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas indicate that child deaths due to suspected maltreatment …

IgA Vasculitis in Children: Beyond the Rash

Urgent message: This is the urgent message about a truly urgent case presentation concerning a pediatric patient in an urgent care center. Diana Sofia Villacis Nunez, MD; Amit Thakral, MD, MBA; and Pareen Shah, MD CASE PRESENTATION A 12-year-old previously healthy female presents with a 5-day history of lower extremity rash and low-grade fever (100.6°F). A month earlier, she had a self-resolving viral upper respiratory infection. The rash is described as mildly pruritic, dark red …

COVID-19 Vaccines Work—but Are Hit-or-Miss Against Emerging Variants

The world celebrated the approval of multiple vaccines against the COVID-19 virus. Almost simultaneously to that, however, news was emerging concerning variants to the virus, first in London and South Africa, but eventually here in the U.S., as well. Some are more transmissible, and just as deadly. Urgent care patients are naturally curious about whether the currently available vaccines offer protection against them. The answer is an unsatisfying “that depends.” According to research published in …

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