Practice Management
The COVID-19 pandemic has put us all to a test. Urgent care operators have had to be creative in finding new approaches to offering care while keeping workers safe, and ensuring that patients have felt as comfortable as possible visiting when they need same-day medical attention. There’s a secondary price to pay for all that vigilance, though: The stress and fear that accompanied the pandemic have taken a toll on our collective mental and emotional …
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When Scripps Health was hit by a cyberattack a few weeks ago, it sent workers scrambling to ascertain the security of sensitive patient health information, company files, and other protected or proprietary data. It’s also likely that the event shook the company’s sense of its own security, probably leaving some with a PTSD-like sense of dread. Needless to say, it also disrupted care at the hospitals and urgent care centers affected. While Scripps has been …
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Mask mandates, capacity limits, and social distancing suggestions are starting to fall by the wayside across the country, leading urgent care operators to reconsider operational changes they may have instituted at the height of the pandemic. As JUCM News readers know, many urgent care centers diverted patients to alternate locations so resources could be dedicated to COVID-19 testing or other related activities. Now, however, Western Sierra Medical Clinic in California, Fayetville Urgent Care in Arkansas, …
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Urgent message: While alarming to parents, febrile seizures in children typically are benign and self-limited. However, the possibility of a life-threatening etiology mandates that the urgent care provider determine the type of seizure and employ appropriate assessments based on factors specific to each case. Tiffany Addington, MD CASE A previously healthy 3-year-old boy presented to urgent care after having a seizure at home. He had a fever that morning and was given ibuprofen. His mother …
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Amid the good news that the COVID-19 vaccines currently being administered in the U.S. cover known variants and that social distancing and mask mandates are being phased out, there’s potentially grim news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the problem is so rare that it’s unlikely to dissuade health officials and legislators, there were at least 10,262 confirmed breakthrough cases of COVID-19 between January 1 and April 30 of this year according …
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In the eyes of many, physician assistants and nurse practitioners (known collectively as advanced practice providers, or APPs) have become indispensable members of the urgent care clinical team. Given that they work under a lower pay scale than physicians, it’s possible for an urgent care operator to hire more APPs than physicians, thereby increasing the productivity of the practice without a corresponding jump in payroll—and reserving more of the physician’s time for the highest-acuity patients. …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking its jurisdictions to work with urgent care operators and hospital emergency rooms to allocate and administer COVID-19 vaccine in an effort to equalize disparities in adult immunization. In its monthly letter to the 64 jurisdictions, which are dispersed throughout the U.S. and its territories, the agency noted that “with 50% of the U.S. population visiting either an emergency department of urgent care facility annually, these access …
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As states allow public venues and private businesses to relax standards regarding attendance and social distancing, the question of who is vaccinated and who is not is becoming more prevalent—and more contentious. Some athletic stadiums have established special sections where people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (and who can prove it with a vaccine “passport”) can sit closer together, forego masks, and even enjoy different concession-stand items than their unvaccinated peers. This has raised …
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It’s been more than 5 months since the first COVID-19 vaccine received an Emergency Use Authorization. Early supply chain challenges have been worked out, for the most part, so most adults have ready access to the vaccine, which costs nothing to receive. And yet, as of May 20, less than half the U.S. population ages 18 years and older is fully vaccinated. As you undoubtedly know, many of those who have declined so far either …
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As JUCM News readers know, national COVID-19 vaccination rates are hovering just below 50%—progress, to be sure, but a figure indicating that we have a long way to go. It’s essential to bear in mind, however, as we head toward summer vacation season, that a national “average” encompasses states with the highest vaccination rates and those where too many people remain unvaccinated. The Associated Press just published an article noting that the percentage of vaccinated …
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