Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

UnitedHealth Sets $100 Billion Expectation for Medical Business

Some “experts” in both the insurance and healthcare industries may have been skeptical when UnitedHealth Group’s Optima division bought MedExpress a few years ago. Others predicted that the insurance giant would likely look for ways to deliver deeper healthcare services to their own plan members. They were right. MedExpress is now the largest urgent care chain in the country. UHG expects even bigger things to come, however—projecting that MedExpress will help push its OptumCare medical …

Rural Hospitals Are Dying; Can Urgent Care Pick Up the Slack for Patients’ Immediate Needs?

More than a quarter (26%) of Americans who live in rural areas have not been able to get healthcare when they needed it at some point in recent years, according to new research National Public Radio conducted with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This in spite of the fact that 87% have one form of health insurance or another. The reason? Rural hospitals, which many rural …

Can Urgent Care APPs Help Boost Cancer Patient Satisfaction and Keep Them Out of the ED?

Oncology itself has largely shifted to ambulatory settings—simultaneously increasing the volume of same-day urgent visits for treatment-related side effects, according to a new article in HemOnc Today. Utilizing the skills of nurse practitioners and physician assistants (known collectively as advanced-practice providers, or APPs) has been shown to keep costs down while also allowing greater, faster access for patients with cancer by giving them another option besides the ED—just as urgent care does for all manner …

Beware—and Be Prepared: Tick-Borne Diseases Are on the Rise

Weekend hikers will soon be joined on the trail by vacationing families and campers—upping the potential for tick bites and associated disease exponentially as the warm weather weeks wear on. Unfortunately, if recent years are any indication, we can expect to see more cases of tick-borne disease than ever; they’ve risen steadily over the past several years. Notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a marked increase in spotted fever rickettsiosis, which …

Urgent Care Doors Will Open Wider to Veterans Next Week

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will start loosening the rules around allowing individuals covered by VA health plans to visit urgent care centers next week—fittingly enough on June 6, the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The move marks the latest step in the evolution of the Veterans Choice Act, which was adopted 5 years ago in response to complaints that veterans were not able to get timely appointments at VA hospitals. At the time, there …

The School Year Is Ending—so It’s Prime Time for Next Fall’s Sports Physicals

Graduations and moving-up ceremonies mean it’s time for students to kick back and start enjoying the summer—and that urgent care centers need to start offering fall sports physicals already. Some states say student-athletes can have physicals for the following school year’s fall sports season in the previous spring. Michigan, for one, permits physicals for fall sports to take place as early as April 15 of the preceding school year. With families often being gone for …

Key Trends in Overall Healthcare Align with Urgent Care’s Path

According to a new report from Definitive Healthcare, industry consolidation and consumerism are the two hottest trends among healthcare companies in the United States—both of which, as we know, also reflect the growth and attributes of the urgent care business. The third most-mentioned trends, the rise of telehealth, is becoming a hot topic in urgent care circles, as well. Industry consolidation was the most-mentioned response (25% of the 1,000 healthcare leaders in the provider, biotech, …

Urgent Care is Forging Inroads in Occ Med—but There’s Still Plenty of Room for Growth

Occupational medicine can be found in more than half of U.S. workplaces, according to newly published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. If data from the Urgent Care Association are any indication, many of the workers and employers who benefit can thank an urgent care operator for that; nearly 73% of respondents who took part in the UCA’s 2018 Benchmarking Report say they …

Urgent Care Boom is Boosting More Industries Than Healthcare

You’re accustomed to reading the latest good news about the urgent care industry here. Lately, you’re almost as likely to see it on your local TV stations and in the newspaper. But on a website called Shopping Centers Today (SCT)? Yes! And if you somehow came across the post we’re referring to, you’d know that members of the shopping center industry are thrilled to see urgent care continuing to prosper—and that more and more urgent …

UCA Webinar: Taking the Stress Out of the Accreditation (and Re-Accreditation) Process

The mere thought of applying for UCA accreditation while you’re hiring, marketing, negotiating contracts, billing and coding—oh, yeah, and providing excellent care to patients at a moment’s notice—could get any urgent care operator’s blood pressure up. UCA says the reality is not all that daunting, however, and is hosting a free webinar to explain why. Your Guide to Success: The UCA Accreditation & Re-accreditation Process is scheduled to take place Wednesday, June 12, at 2 …