Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

If the Patients Can’t Come to Urgent Care, This Operator Brings Urgent Care to the Patients

Too many urgent care centers have suffered financial and personnel losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. From being overlooked as viable participants in widespread testing efforts to patients who were too afraid to leave their homes even for medical care, the industry has taken a major hit. Some businesses may even go under. Others, however, are finding a way to adapt by offering telemedicine services or channeling patients to different locations for different needs. Merion Health …

Brace Yourself: Undiagnosed Cases of COVID-19 May Outnumber Confirmed Cases by 10 to 1

Some states have been accused of “reopening” their economies too soon, with the result being upsurges in COVID-19 cases—and renewed concerns that the healthcare system could be overwhelmed. This may not reflect a resurgence at all, however, but instead reveal the number of cases that had gone unrecognized previously. Robert Redfield, MD, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggested recently that for every documented case of COVID-19, there are probably 10 more …

ED Utilization Data Reveal Where Urgent Care Could Make an Impact—and Draw Young Patients

A team of researchers who sought to understand what insights could be gleaned from studying emergency room utilization measures wound up revealing data that could be useful for urgent care operators seeking to bolster their pediatric services. A study just published in The American Journal of Managed Care considered whether ED visit count and ED reliance could be used to identify clinically or demographically different populations of children. Of interest to urgent care operators is …

COVID-19 Habits Offer a Rich Lesson in What Patients Like About Telemedicine

Unfounded or not, fear of visiting healthcare facilities (including urgent care centers) has resulted in many patients forgoing care during the COVID-19 crisis. However, the pandemic has also resulted in growing reliance on telemedicine—and, not coincidentally, in employment of telemedicine services among urgent care operators. A survey of 1,800 patients conducted by Doctor.com and published in the journal Patient Care revealed what moves patients to choose telemedicine for a given complaint, but also their preferences …

CDC Update: Obesity Is High Risk with COVID-19—but Hypertension Is Lower Risk Than First Thought

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to refine its guidance on which patients are most likely to experience severe disease when infected with COVID-19—with some of their statements reflecting a change from earlier advice. Early on in the pandemic, the CDC suggested that hypertension would put infected patients at higher risk than those without hypertension; now, however, the agency now says hypertension does not confer significant additional risk. Obesity, however, is associated with …

UCA Webinar: Why Acute Flaccid Myelitis Should Be on Your Radar Now

While the world’s attention has been focused on COVID-19, another mysterious virus has continued to wreak havoc on the families it affects. Acute flaccid myelitis, which has been afflicting a growing number of children for several years, has continued to strike seemingly out of the blue. While care for children diagnosed with AFM is clearly beyond the resources of an urgent care center, parents could easily present to urgent care when symptoms first start to …

UHG Study: Too Many Children Lack Primary Care; Urgent Care Could Be Filling the Gaps

Data from a new study by UnitedHealth Group show that urgent care centers could be providing care for millions of American children who have limited access to well-child visits. Looking at the care of plan members between the ages of 3 and 18 in West Virginia, they found that only one out of three children received an annual well-child visit—with the shortfall being especially dramatic among Medicaid-covered families, children of color, and in rural areas. …

New CDC Data Paint a Dark Picture of Patients Neglecting Needs for Immediate Care

Readers of JUCM News may recall that, for the most part, patients have been putting off annual physicals, follow-up exams for chronic conditions, and well-child visits since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the U.S. However, new data from the CDC show that too many patients also avoided care for immediate needs. Over a 10-week period at the start of various state stay-at-home recommendations, 20% fewer patients sought care for what ended up being heart …

Be Aware: Thyroid Symptoms Could Mimic Serious Pathologies in Patients Who’ve Had COVID-19

A patient presents to your urgent care center with palpitations and neck pain radiating to her jaw. She also has a painful, enlarged thyroid on palpation. Concerns for heart attack and malignancy were ultimately ruled out upon further evaluation in this real-world case published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The patient, who it was later learned had recently recovered from COVID-19, was found to have subacute thyroiditis (SAT), presumed to have stemmed …

Another Drug Is Purported to Reduce Deaths Due to COVID-19; Is This One the Real Deal?

Several drugs (and even, dangerously, household cleaning products) have been put forth as possible preventive or curative agents for COVID-19. They’ve all been discredited for that purpose, ultimately, so far. Now, however, researchers in the UK are suggesting that a commonly used glucocorticosteroid may hold some promise. As part of the Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy (RECOVERY) trial, dexamethasone was shown to reduce death from COVID-19 by one third in ventilated patients and by one …