Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

When Patients Describe What Sounds Like AFib, Ask Them About Their Drinking Habits

Patients experiencing atrial fibrillation for the first time sometimes mistake their symptoms for a heart attack and call 911 or rush off to the emergency room. Once they’ve gone through it a few times, and understand that AFib is not high-risk in the short term, they tend to take a more relaxed approach. Some simply call their cardiologist or electrophysiologist so they can track the event. Others may be inclined to visit an urgent care …

Virginia Lawmakers OK Ambulance Transport Directly to Urgent Care—but There’s a Catch

The state legislature in Virginia just passed a bill that enables ambulances to transport patients directly to 24-hour urgent care centers and other nonhospital healthcare facilities when clinically appropriate. While clearly that indicates recognition that urgent care centers offer care on par with the ED, short of life- or limb-threatening emergencies, the interesting thing is that only one urgent care operator, Kaiser Permanents, runs facilities that are open 24 hours a day in the Commonwealth. …

Penn State Seeks Urgent Care Input on Pediatric Care

Regular readers of JUCM and JUCM News know pediatric urgent care is a growing segment of our industry. However, as has been the case with urgent care in general historically, data on practice norms are scarce. Penn State University is working to help remedy that by conducting a survey about urgent care centers’ capability to treat children. Questions seek information on availability of nearby emergency room and children’s hospital care, the level of training in …

Beware One Secondary Concern Regarding COVID-19: Drug Shortages

COVID-19 is capturing the public’s attention more than any other health crisis right now. The concern, warranted or not, is that a worldwide pandemic will prove more deadly than any other outbreak in recent history. A more immediate, albeit secondary concern, as noted in an article just published online by Forbes, is that a variety of factors could conspire to create dangerous drug shortages. According to the Food and Drug Administration, one medication is already …

Is Florida Looking to Cast Pharmacists as Primary Care Providers?

We told you recently about pending legislation in Virginia that would enable pharmacists to prescribe—not just dispense—medications for certain conditions, such as strep throat and influenza. Now comes news that Florida is working on legislation, Senate Bill 714, that would empower pharmacists to essentially conduct a primary care provider-style patient visit for flu. If it becomes law, a patient with flu-like symptoms could go to a drugstore, be given an instant lab test in the …

An Update on COVID-19 from JUCM

Over the past few days, the Centers or Disease Control and Prevention and various state health departments have released details about a growing number of confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19. The general public has been attentive to local and national media coverage on the subject, with many taking to social media to express concern and to conjecture about how serious the threat may be in their areas. Unfortunately, much of that “conjecture” feeds an …

Offer Patients the Role of a Lifetime: Antibiotic Hero

Urgent care as a whole has been at the forefront of trying to turn around the trend of overprescribing antibiotics. The Urgent Care Association even offers an Antibiotic Stewardship Commendation to urgent care operators who meet select criteria demonstrating responsible, effective use of antibiotics, and has an online Antibiotic Stewardship Toolkit. Now the UCA’s partner on the toolkit, George Washington University, is launching a new initiative called Be an Antibiotic Hero with the Antibiotic Resistance …

Urgent Care Is Growing—and Improving—and the Hospital Industry Is Taking Note

As you may have seen, the Urgent Care Association just came out with the latest version of its Urgent Care Benchmarking Report. And if you weren’t aware of that until now, be assured that other segments of the healthcare marketplace have noticed. Becker’s Hospital Review, in fact, alerted their online readers to the report’s update recently, highlighting three key pieces of data. After relaying that the urgent care marketplace continues to grow across the board, …

Insurer-Owned Clinics Are a Growing Threat to More Traditional Practices

More U.S. insurance companies, not satisfied to merely decide what care and treatments they’ll cover, and to what degree they’ll compensate clinicians, are opting to establish their own healthcare facilities in an effort to control both delivery and payment for healthcare, according to an article published recently in The Wall Street Journal. It cites UnitedHealth Group as a prime example. Through its Optum unit, UHG has been buying up practices—including urgent care centers, individual primary …

Remember, Urgent Care is a Global Phenomenon—and JUCM is Part of It

We tend to look at the urgent care industry as an American phenomenon (which is understandable, given the total emersion necessary to keep pace with patient demands and maintaining compliance with a bevy of regulations issued by payers, state boards, HIPAA…). However, the same revolution that has been taking place in the U.S. for decades is ongoing in countries around the world. New Zealand, for example, has a very active urgent care marketplace and a …

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