Practice Management
Fast growth and the deepening physician shortage are quickening the pace at which urgent care operators need to fill clinical spots. The challenge is not simply finding the right personnel, though. Just as an urgent care facility must be credentialled, so must individual providers. That can take up to 120 days—which can have serious implications when it comes to billing patients. Say a patient whose insurance has you squarely in-network is seen by a physician …
Read More
Keeping medications on site is, appropriately, a tightly regulated practice. Done improperly, it can put patients at physical risk while also leaving your operation wide open for penalties and litigation. Full compliance is your only salvation. To ensure you’re up to speed, log in to the Urgent Care Association’s upcoming webinar, Medication Management—Meeting and Maintaining Compliance, scheduled for Thursday, September 26. Melissa L. Pollard of Premier Health will walk participants through the steps necessary to …
Read More
You turn over every stone to ensure your new hires are of the highest caliber not only clinically but as human beings. The vast majority of times, as in all urgent care businesses, your due diligence pays off. Then there’s the rare occasion when the horrific and unpredictable happens, as seen in a recent news story out of Fresno, CA. There, a male physician has been charged with five counts of various sex offenses against …
Read More
Walgreens appears to be working harder to transition from a retail health provider to one that offers actual urgent care/primary care services, if its most recent moves are any indication. The company revealed it’s going to work with Humana to open two primary care centers for Medicare patients in existing Kansas City-area stores by the end of this year—doubling the number of locations participating in a pilot program that began in 2018. Each will have …
Read More
By now most Americans have gotten the message that inappropriate use of antibiotics is dangerous. And yet, patients persist in begging for a prescription when a clinician tells them they have a viral infection for which an antibiotic isn’t indicated. No one is more of aware of this than the urgent care provider, who is likely to hear those pleas multiple times every day. So, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is inviting …
Read More
The newly released results of a consumer survey on telemedicine indicates a majority of Americans are open to using telemedicine when needed. Granted, the research was conducted by American Well, a telemedicine company with a heavily vested interest in seeing the concept take off; nonetheless, it echoes a growing trend among some urgent care operators like Righttime Medical Care. According to the American Well data, 66% of respondents are willing to use telehealth. Among those, …
Read More
It likely wasn’t by design, but Prevention magazine just ran an article that could drive countless patients into their nearest urgent care centers in search of vaccines they might have missed getting. The article certainly is blunt about the possible consequences of not getting those vaccines, telling readers that “Vaccines save lives, and not just young ones.” With the guidance of consulting physicians, Prevention lists vaccines for influenza, tetanus, shingles, human papillomavirus (HPV), and varicella …
Read More
Forty-one states and the District of Columbia have seen confirmed cases of West Nile virus so far this year—206 cases and counting. On a much smaller scale, four patients have been diagnosed with eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) in Massachusetts. One died, underscoring the severity of the disease. What both sets of data share is that they reflect the dangers of mosquitos to humans in the United States. Given the sudden onset of symptoms, the facts …
Read More
Odds are you don’t care that Las Cruces trounced Manzano in early-season Albuquerque high school football last week. Truth be told, most area residents outside of those two school communities probably couldn’t care less, either. Guess what, though? Leading into a recap of the game on KRQE News 13, the audience saw a full screen of text screaming “Week 1: Game of the Week—NextCare Urgent Care.” Nearly 700,000 television viewers (also known as prospective patients) …
Read More
It’s believed that widespread administration of human papillomavirus vaccine could prevent roughly 33,700 cancers annually. At the same time, there are two irrefutable facts that speak in favor of vaccination: 1) more than 4,000 women die of cervical cancer each year, with HPV associated with almost every case, and 2) less than half of Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 are getting vaccinated. The disconnect isn’t in public awareness, though; it appears that parents …
Read More