Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Update: As the Pandemic Grinds On, NIH Guidelines Become More Urgent Care-Relevant

It’s a vast overstatement to say that the COVID-19 crisis has passed, but at this point enough study has been done for the National Institutes of Health to look more deeply into outpatient management, rather than to view every case as imminently life-threatening. The latest update even includes a section entitled Outpatient Management of Acute COVID-19. Read it and you will find recommendations for screening, triage, and therapeutic management of patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who …

More Institutions Require People to Prove Their COVID-19 Status. Help Yourself by Helping Them

While the idea of governmental vaccine “passports” (documentation showing that an individual has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19) is unlikely to catch on at a national level, schools already require students who have been exposed to or diagnosed with COVID-19 to show a negative test before returning to class. Some fitness centers are offering classes with relaxed mask requirements exclusively for members who can prove they’re fully vaccinated. And the Miami Heat basketball team has …

A Year Into the Pandemic, It’s Time to Probe More Consistently for Mental Health Issues

It was presumed last spring that restricted movements, isolation, and fear over a deadly disease would have a deleterious effect on the mental health of many Americans. That concern has now been validated in the form of a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which shows that the number of adults who reported recent symptoms of anxiety or a depressive disorder jumped 5% (from 36.4% to 41.5%) between August 2020 and February …

OTC COVID-19 Tests Are Available on the Cheap, but Do They Meet a Patient’s Needs?

As mass market retailers like Walmart and CVS push sales of over-the-counter COVID-19 tests, urgent care operators may have concerns that patients will no longer seek answers from their local urgent care center. Undoubtedly some patients who want to know if they have COVID-19 for personal reasons, such as if they want to visit an elderly relative, will head down to the drugstore for their test, many more require documentation from a healthcare provider for …

COVID-19 Vaccines Are a Game Changer—but the Need for (and Opportunity in) Testing Isn’t Going Away

Vaccines are getting all the headlines these days, but the reality is that COVID-19 testing will continue to be essential to helping the United States recover from the effects of the pandemic for a long time. That means opportunities for urgent care to play an essential role in reducing spread and ensuring early treatment abound. Most recently, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a $12 billion program to expand testing at the community …

Avoiding COVID-19 Vaccines Over Risk of Blood Clots Makes No Sense—Here’s Why

Reports of blood clots and a “pause” in administering one COVID-19 vaccine in the United States have strengthened some people’s resolve to hold off on getting a shot. The irony—and danger—of this stance has been made very clear in a study just released by the University of Oxford. According to the paper, risk for cerebral venous thrombosis due to COVID-19 infection is actually “many-fold” higher than it is from receiving the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine or the …

Patients Still Struggling with Vaccine Hesitancy? See if Facts Can Cut Through the Fog

Results of efforts to get Americans vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus have been mixed. While New Mexico has administered at least one dose to roughly 78% of its population, Alabama has only done so with 47% of its residents, according to the COVID Data Tracker on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. While there have been issues with rollout in many states, March data from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Vaccine Monitor show 20% …

STDs Are Running Rampant in the U.S.—with Congenital Syphilis Leading the Way

For the sixth year in a row, cases of sexually transmitted diseases eclipsed previously historic numbers in the United States, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis all grew in 2019, adding up to 2.5 million cases, capping a nearly 30% increase over a 5-year period. Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that congenital syphilis nearly quadrupled during that time. Despite treatment options, STDs …

Welcome to Tick Season. This One Is Going to Be More Complicated Than Usual

Spring weather is a signal to get back outside after a long winter of cabin fever, especially given lockdowns associated with the pandemic. But it also signals the beginning of tick season—and with it, a return of patients seeking assessment and treatment for bites that could cause Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. COVID-19 actually complicates this, as well, in that some of the symptoms associated with Lyme disease (such as fever, fatigue, muscle aches, …

Calls for Greater Regulation of Urgent Care Resurface

A pair of not-for-profit consumer advocacy groups have renewed calls for the urgent care industry to be more regulated by the government, claiming that urgent care centers and retail clinics simply are not affordable for low-income patients, according to an article recently published by Modern Healthcare. The issue could be resolved, they say, if the government required these facilities to provide care for patients covered by Medicaid. As urgent care veterans know, the problem here …

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