Practice Management
The proportion of physician assistants (PAs) who are working in urgent care increased by 0.5% nationally from 2020 to 2024, according to the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants’ (NCCPA) 2024 annual statistical profile of PAs. About 5.6% of all certified PAs work in an urgent care setting. Only hospitals (42.3%) and office-based private practices (36.4%) show a larger proportion of PAs. Hawaii gained the most urgent care PAs from 2020 to 2024 with …
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Minnesota Health officials are reporting an outbreak of Trichophyton mentagrophytes type VII (TMVII), a fungus that causes ringworm and is associated with transmission through sexual contact, primarily among men who have sex with men. In July 2025, the first case of TMVII was confirmed in a resident who presented with a genital rash. Since then, the state has identified 13 confirmed cases and 27 suspected cases, officials say. The first case of TMVII in the …
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Effective April 2026, the Kroger Co. will be closing 18 The Little Clinic in-store locations in the state of Georgia and at least 1 in Ohio. The company has not given any details behind the decision. There’s reason to believe the company may be banking on the possibility of a new model in the market, in which pharmacists would have expanded scope of practice to recommend treatment and prescribe medications. Such a model is now …
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Covenant Health announced this month that it has acquired 2 Lakeway Urgent Care locations in Lenoir City and the Greater Knoxville, Tennessee, area. With the transaction, the nonprofit now has a total of 9 urgent care locations across the state. By way of history, in August 2023, Covenant Health Urgent Care launched as a joint venture between Covenant Health and Urgent Care Group, which then expanded by acquiring ParkMed Urgent Care. By late last year, …
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Many of the adverse events listed on the labels for statin drugs may not be supported by good evidence of a causal relationship, according to an analysis in The Lancet. Adverse events examined from 19 double-blind trials do not seem to show statin therapy causes cognitive impairment, depression, sleep disturbance, and peripheral neuropathy. Four events did have significance in the study. The authors say their analysis “has confirmed that statin therapy increases hepatic transaminase and …
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According to new data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), maternal syphilis rates in the United States are still on the increase, part of a decade-long trend of rising cases. From 2022 through 2024, maternal syphilis rates increased 28% overall (from 280.4 cases per 100,000 births to 357.9 cases). The rate climbed 16% between 2022 and 2023 and an additional 10% from 2023 to 2024. Looking at the long-term trend, previous data showed …
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In a new statement, the Urgent Care College of Physicians (UCCOP) and the College of Urgent Care Medicine (CUCM) make a strong stand against the development, distribution and promotion of what are being marketed online as “urgent care kits.” The kits typically include antibiotics, steroids, or other prescription medications packaged for unsupervised use by consumers at home. They are often advertised as a way for families to be prepared for “life’s unexpected moments,” which suggests …
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Antibiotics are the most commonly implicated drugs in emergency department (ED) visits for adverse drug events (ADEs) among children, as published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. Researchers found antibiotics were implicated in more than one-third of pediatric ADE visits in the United States during 2019-2023, with an estimated average of 47,628 ED visits annually. In some age groups, antibiotics were identified in more than half of the ADE visits. Among the …
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Newly proposed legislation in Arizona aims to regulate radiation safety beyond the current federal and state standards, according to AZ Mirror. Proponents say the package represents a first-in-the-nation push focused on “radiation protection systems” for interventional x-ray. For example, it requires hospitals performing real-time x-ray procedures to install enhanced protection systems in at least 50% of their procedure rooms by July 2027, and the system must include shielding that offers protection equivalent to or better …
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Clinician teams have developed 2 new algorithms to guide the triage and management of adults with symptoms suggestive of urinary tract infection (UTI) across care settings, including patients who present by phone, portals, virtual visits, and in-person visits. Unlike prior recommendations that were built on telephone-based triage and empiric treatment, this new guidance published in JAMA Network Open reflects the new channels patients use to seek care. They provide structured decision support for determining visit …
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