Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

When Urgent Care Pitches in During a Disaster, Everybody Wins

Parts of the South and Midwest are fighting to recover from severe storms that brought tornadoes, flooding, death, and destruction recently. And for every displaced family there is a team of first responders working tirelessly to help their communities pick up the pieces. Unfortunately, they can continue to be high risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that flood waters can carry human, animal, medical, industrial, and household waste. Exposure can cause wound …

Another Urgent Care-Insurance Initiative; But It’s Not What You Think

The comingling of urgent care and insurance has become so common that it scarcely raises headlines at this point. A new initiative involving GoHealth Urgent Care is a bit different, however. The company is teaming up with Force Diagnostics , a clinical underwriting data services company, to offer expedited physical exams for life insurance applicants. Currently, the standard practice when an individual applies for a life insurance policy is for a healthcare provider to be …

Remember That Study About Patient Preference for the White Coat? Here’s Another Thought

We told you about a study that asked patients to weigh in on their preferences for how healthcare providers should dress. The choices ranged from office-casual to traditional business attire to the clinical white coat with a tie, or with a dress shirt for women. White-coat-and-tie or dress shirt proved to be the preferred attire because it conveyed both business formality and clinical authority. An article just published in The New York Times has now …

Employing PAs and NPs in Urgent Care Can Save on Payroll—But for How Long?

The growing authority—and employment—of physician assistants and nurse practitioners in many practice settings demonstrates the practical need for high-level clinicians who cost less to employ than physicians. You can engage more of them than you can physicians, per dollar. That helps the operation run more smoothly without breaking the bank, theoretically. As PAs and NPs, known collectively as advanced-practice providers (APPs), grow in stature, however, a movement is afoot to free them from the bonds …

Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans Look to Extend Reach into Primary Care and Urgent Care

Working with healthcare giant Sanitas USA, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BC/BS) plans in numerous states are opening up primary care clinics that further complicate the competitive landscape occupied by urgent care, retail clinics, hospital systems, and traditional medical practices. The partnership already operates such practices in several markets in Florida and New Jersey, both of which may be expanding. Next on the horizon are plans to work with Health Care Services Corp., which owns BC/BS …

Online Reviews Matter—a Lot—to Patients, and They Expect You to Listen

Some operators may dismiss online reviews as a random mishmash of disgruntled patients spewing sour grapes when a doctor visit didn’t go the way they wanted or, to the other extreme, meaningless praise heaped on a business by shills. Those operators do so at their own peril, however, as a new survey reveals that online reviews matter a great deal to patients who are about to make healthcare decisions. According to the report from PatientPop, …

Be Alert for Hep A Cases, Especially in Certain States

The ongoing (and building) measles outbreak is getting most of the headlines, but simultaneous to that hepatitis A cases have continued to mount well into the thousands. Since the first confirmed case in 2016, more than 15,000 infections have occurred across the country; some 8,500 have required hospitalization. Florida has been hit especially hard, with 883 cases reported so far this year. That’s more than the total for all of 2017 and 2018 combined. Virginia …

Current Drug Test Data Reflect New Trends in Opioid and Marijuana Use Among Workers

As marijuana use becomes legal in more communities across the country and urgent care providers (among others) get the message that opioid prescriptions have been far too prevalent, the nature of positive drug tests in the U.S. workforce seems to be changing with the times. Based on more than 10 million workplace drug test results in 2018, Quest Diagnostics reports growth in positive results for marijuana, while positive results for most opiates were down vs …

CDC: Opioid Prescriptions Covering 4 to 7 Days Should Suffice for Acute Pain

As we continue to see success in lowering use of opioid drugs in managing acute pain, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers data suggesting what might be appropriate parameters for their use when they’re truly necessary. Based on 13,440 patients covered by a large U.S. commercial insurer in 2014, and who filled an opioid prescription within 7 days of a primary care clinic visit, an initial prescription for 4–7 days was found to …

More Insured Americans (and More ED Visits) Since the Advent of ‘Affordable Care’

The stated intention of the Affordable Care Act was to move the U.S. to a nation in which healthcare insurance was available to every citizen. Part of the subtext for its effect on the healthcare system was that if everyone had access to traditional health insurance, more people would engage in preventive healthcare, leading to lower need for emergency room visits and associated costs. That cause-and-effect has yet to be realized, however. While 20 million …