Practice Management
Here’s the fact: California legislators approved a bill (Assembly Bill 5, or AB 5) that will reclassify “gig” workers from contractors to employees. Now here’s the fear: AB 5 will essentially doom the concept of locum tenens clinicians in the state. The bill was conceived as a way for gig workers to get benefits from the companies they contract with—though coverage of the bill has largely focused on app-based transportation companies Uber and Lyft. The …
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Two years ago this month, we reported on the opening of an urgent care facility within the confines of D/FW International Airport in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX. The thinking at the time was that the combination of roughly 65,000 people working on site and around 100 times that number—65 million people—passing through the airport yearly made for a substantial customer base. Another operation followed suit, at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. However viable as the …
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The United States Department of Labor has ordered a Mississippi urgent care operator to pay $147,622 in back wages to 16 nurse practitioners who were illegally deprived of overtime pay. The operator classified the NPs as independent contractors rather than employees and, as such, paid them a regular hourly rate—even when they worked more than 40 hours in a week, which is where they ran afoul of the law. The Department of Labor found that …
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Many urgent care operators have found occupational medicine to be a natural fit for their business. If you’re one of them, you know workers’ comp claims go with the territory—in fact, understanding workers’ comp is essential to your survival in the occ med space. And if you’re not operating in that space but are considering jumping in, you need to do so with your eyes wide open. What an Urgent Care Clinician Needs to Know …
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While most Americans may not consider the 2019–2020 flu season even underway yet, federal health officials are warning that the first death of the season—a 4-year-old California child—could be a warning sign of just how bad it’s going to get. The child, who did have underlying health problems, tested positive for influenza earlier this month. That case may indicate this flu season will be picking up steam fast—a notion supported by the just-concluded Australian flu …
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Urgent care operators have gotten more competitive with each other in recent years, working tirelessly to distinguish themselves and investing in new technologies to ensure the overall patient experience continues to exceed expectations. They’ve also had to make it clear to patients that urgent care offers a wider range of services than retail drugstores as those companies have tried to get a piece of the walk-in care action. There’s another setting that’s gone somewhat under …
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It’s safe to say no one reading this would disagree that urgent care centers fulfill an essential role in the U.S. healthcare landscape of 2019. It follows that fair compensation for care provided at an urgent care center should be a given. As you undoubtedly know, that’s not necessarily the case, however, and the Urgent Care Association is trying to make sure the parties with the authority to change that inequity get the message. UCA …
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With flu season in its early days and news reports revealing the true dangers of vaping on a daily basis, it appears the combination of the two could create a “perfect storm” with deadly consequences. Research published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine reveals that use of e-cigarettes disrupts a person’s innate immune response to viral infections; the effect is especially severe in women, according to the report. Another study, this …
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Urgent care offers convenience that’s just not feasible in a traditional primary care practice, at a price far lower than the emergency room would charge for the same acuity-level of care. That’s why it’s caught on. Similarly, urgent care providers who offer occupational medicine services have found success in offering those benefits to local businesses, especially those whose work force engages in physical labor or has a public safety aspect to it (such as warehouses …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in the midst of investigating an outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infections that have sickened dozens—and left two people dead. Cases have occurred in 13 states, to date, with most patients requiring hospitalization. No specific source has been identified. Listeria symptoms vary greatly by patient and site of infection, but common complaints include fever and diarrhea similar to other food-borne infections. Pregnant women who are infected tend to …
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