Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Schools Are Looking to Test for COVID-19 on a Widespread Basis. Are You in the Running to Do It?

California and Virginia are among the states to reveal recently how they plan to address large-scale testing for COVID-19. While their approaches are distinct, each might offer clues as to how your urgent care operation could support area school systems while possibly introducing new patients to all the services you’re capable of providing. California, after an 11-district pilot program, announced that it is expanding coverage for rapid diagnostic testing of students and staff throughout the …

The U.S. Is in a Precarious Place with COVID-19. It’s Time for Urgent Care to Step In

COVID-19 vaccinations are being administered at a good clip in most states—with many governors reacting by easing restrictions on social gatherings. Unfortunately, those events coincide with more than half the country seeing record rates of infection. One new development that could be cause for optimism (for the health of the country and the future of urgent care) is the realization that monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) seem to mitigate the effects of SARS-CoV-2. In fact, the Department …

JUCM Webinar: Fair Reimbursement Starts with Compliant Coding. Are You Getting What You Deserve?

As if recovery from economic hardships wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t challenging enough, a slew of new coding changes took effect January 1. If you’re having trouble keeping up with the right way to code every procedure—thereby assuring you’re doing what you can to be reimbursed fairly—you’re not alone. That’s why JUCM invited Christian Molstrom, MD to lead a two-part discussion of 2021 Coding Best Practices for Providers. For the second live webinar, Dr. …

‘Alive’ or ‘Dead,’ Urgent Care Is Making Headlines for Its Resiliency and Growth

Anyone who works in urgent care and saw an industry article published recently under The Business Journals umbrella was probably taken aback by a headline that began Urgent Care Is Dead. Given that this was followed by Long Live Urgent Care, it seems the author of the headline was trading on the old expression The king is dead, long live the king for shock value. If you read the article, though, you were probably pleasantly …

Israel’s COVID-19 Death Toll Was Zero Last Thursday. Is the U.S. Heading for That Day?

Widespread vaccination is being credited for helping Israel reduce its rate of COVID-19 infection, with the crowning achievement being a day free of deaths attributed to the virus for the first time since last June. That same day, only 0.04% of tests administered turned up positive. Just days before, the country passed the 5 million mark in vaccinations, meaning nearly 54% of the population—and 80% of those over age 16—had gotten at least one COVID-19 …

We Dodged a Bullet with the ’20-’21 Flu Season—but What Happens When the Next One Hits?

Cases of influenza for the 2021–21 season were roughly 1% of what we’ve seen in the U.S. over the past few years (just 2,000 cases between September 2020 and April 2021, vs the typical 200,000-plus), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Much of the credit is being given to precautions taken because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While wearing masks, ratcheting up our attention to everyday hygiene, and social distancing helped us ward …

Be Aware: Offering COVID-19 Vaccine May Garner More Appreciation Than It Will Revenue

There’s no doubt that the ability to offer patients immunization against a deadly virus would be a good thing for urgent care. Patients who have never visited your facility before may be encouraged to step inside for the first time, thereby getting a close-up view of how professional your team is and leaving with a peace of mind they may have been lacking for months. What offering the vaccine will not do is provide even …

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 …

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