Practice Management
Mainstream media coverage of the international 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak continues at a breakneck pace, even though there have been very few confirmed cases in the U.S. at this point. It seems to be weighing on every patient locked into a winter cold, but the fact is that many more patients are dying of influenza than are likely to even be exposed to 2019-nCoV. While clinicians should be vigilant for symptoms of 2019-nCoV and …
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Seeing opioid prescriptions increase by some 300% over a 25-year period in the United States—and their home state of Maryland land in the top five states for opioid-related deaths in 2017—decision makers at Anne Arundel Health System determined to find a way to reduce their rate of opioid prescribing without hindering efforts to reduce patients’ suffering. As it turns out, they didn’t have to look too hard. First, they recognized that physicians were writing for …
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Last year—as has been the case for the past several years—data breaches rose across multiple industries in the United States, according to new data from the Identity Theft Resource Center. That 17% increase may be especially hazardous in urgent care and other healthcare settings, wherein the risk is exposure of not only financial information but also sensitive, confidential medical data. Hacking accounts for the greatest number of breaches, following by “unauthorized access.” As we’ve told …
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Not along ago, we shared the story of a Grosse Pointe, MI urgent care operator that was losing patients due to an overflow parking situation in the retail center where they were located. They were allotted a certain number of spots according to the terms of their lease, but those spaces were too often used by patrons of a neighboring athletic facility. Beaumont Urgent Care thought putting up signs indicating which parking spaces were “theirs” …
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Literally every day international health officials, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state health departments issue new statements about suspected or confirmed cases of 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), possible routes of transmission, and the precautions thought to be helpful in stemming its spread. The CDC updates its dedicated 2019-nCoV webpage as needed and should be considered the most reliable source of solid information on the virus itself, but the Urgent Care Association has …
Read MoreIt’s a popular, but trite, tribute to say someone “wrote the book on [fill in the blank].” It’s usually not a statement of fact, however. A rare exception would be to say, “Peter Rosen wrote the book on emergency medicine” because, in fact, Peter Rosen, MD really was responsible for the first comprehensive textbook in emergency medicine (Rosen’s Emergency Management: Concepts and Clinical Practice, the first edition of which was published in 1983). A …
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In weighing whether an opioid prescription was warranted for a given patient, it’s likely that you were guided one way or the other by your electronic health record system. If that system was linked to the $145 million settlement levied against Allscripts-owned Practice Fusion by the Department of Justice, you may have been duped into thinking writing for an opioid was warranted when it might not have been. Given that Practice Fusion describes its offerings …
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You don’t hear much about urgent care–emergency room “hybrid” locations—unless you happen to be in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Albuquerque, or Indianapolis market, where they’re starting to become more common. Like urgent care, the UCC/ED combo locations (wherein an urgent care center and a freestanding ED are “co-located” on the same property) have gotten the attention of real estate professionals who recognize a perfect pairing between businesses looking for a lease and high-traffic shopping centers. Healthcare …
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Recognizing both an increase in incidence of sexually transmitted disease and patient preference for where they seek treatment for STDs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a new set of guidelines on the subject. While previous guidelines, such as those put forth by the CDC in 2015, still reflect current thinking on treatment, the new set, dubbed Recommendations for Providing Quality Sexually Transmitted Diseases Clinical Services, 2020, address a general approach to …
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After seemingly taking a month off to celebrate the winter holidays, legislators in Massachusetts are again making noise about imposing regulations and licensure standards on urgent care operators in the Commonwealth. An article published by The Boston Globe, headlined State Seeks to Rein In Largely Unregulated Urgent Care Industry, Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders bemoans “there is no standardized definition or structure” for urgent care and that “in terms of consumer …
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