Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

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 …

What Better Place to Fight Bullying Than a Pediatric Urgent Care Center?

Children who are being bullied will go to great lengths to deny they’re being bullied. Tell the teacher and they’re branded a tattletale. Tell their mom or dad, and the next thing you know they’re marching into the school and raising a fuss. It’s downright embarrassing—and stressful. PM Pediatrics is partnering with the Long Island Coalition Against Bullying in New York to give children who are the victims of bullies another, hopefully less imposing option: …

HHS Ambulance Program Would Cut Costs and Push More Patients to Urgent Care

The United States Department of Health and Human Services is working on a pilot program that would give ambulance operators the option—aided by incentives—to take patients with nonemergent complaints to lower-cost setting like urgent care instead of the emergency room. While the aim is to reduce Medicare and Medicaid costs, patients would benefit from getting in and out of a healthcare facility in less time, with less exposure to whatever brought other patients to the …

The Longer Patients Wait in the ED, the More of Them Leave Against Medical Advice

There’s a strange dichotomy afoot in California emergency rooms: Patients are heading to the emergency room in greater numbers than in years past—but even more of them are leaving against medical advice out of frustration over waiting so long to see a provider, according to data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and published recently in California Healthline. Approximately 352,000 ED visits in 2017 ended with patients leaving after seeing a doctor …