Practice Management
In October, we shared the story of of a white mother who said an urgent care center refused to believe the little black girl with her was her daughter, despite her insistence that she had in fact adopted the girl; consequently, the girl was refused care and the urgent care center received a ton of negative attention. Now another urgent care center has been caught up in case on the flipside—treating a child who was …
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Are whistleblowers bottom feeders who betray their employers to make a buck, or crusaders for the public good, responsible for bringing to light corporate or government malfeasance? Whichever your answer, the fact is that whistleblower lawsuits, to which urgent care operations are clearly not immune, take a massive toll on both the whistleblower/complainant and the defendant in the suit. The majority of cases involve healthcare, with Medicare fraud being an especially rich field (probably not …
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As many as 2.1 million United States veterans will be able drop into any approved urgent care center that’s convenient to them whenever they need to, without prior authorization, under new regulations proposed by the Department of Veterans Affairs this week. The option to see private physicians, including urgent care providers, would apply to any vets who would have to wait more than 20 days or who would have to drive 30 minutes or more …
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Urgent care veterans, insurers, and certainly any patient who has ever visited both have been saying this for a long time, but a new study out of Vanderbilt University Medical Center confirms that freestanding emergency rooms are likely to charge more (sometimes a lot more) than urgent care centers for the same services. The study, newly published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine, uncovered certain cost characteristics of freestanding EDs that had been converted from …
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Some 10% of patients will tell you they’re allergic to penicillin if the subject comes up, so you’d better give them something else if that’s what’s indicated for their diagnosis. The problem is, even those who believe what they’re saying are likely to be mistaken. As noted in an article just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, less than 5% of the U.S. population actually has an allergy to penicillin. In this …
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Much of the northeast corner of the U.S. is expected to plunge into a deep freeze this week, raising the likelihood that your urgent care centers will be seeing cold weather-related injuries. Some can be relatively minor, such as acute back pain in the wake of heavy snow shoveling, but that same activity could spark chest pain, especially in older patients. Then there’s frostbite, hypothermia, and orthopedic presentations related to slipping on slick surfaces outside. …
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We’ve been tracking the confluence of healthcare delivery and private industry, especially among tech companies, for some time now. The latest could be a move that ultimately puts Amazon in direct competition with urgent care centers for some patients. The company has been trying to forge a new link in the healthcare supply chain by getting into the home health test market. Within the past few months, according to CNBC, Amazon was in talks to …
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Researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School say inappropriate use of antibiotics is “still rampant,” with only 12.8% of antibiotic prescriptions in their study being given appropriately. Further, their data show a relatively low 6.7% of those prescriptions originated in urgent care centers, far less than suggested in a JAMA Internal Medicine piece published last October. This latest study, published in The BMJ, reflects insurance claims and shows that antibiotics were most commonly overprescribed …
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We’ve told you recently about outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease in communities that are loath to line up for immunizations. Unfortunately, that trend is continuing as a rapidly expanding rash of measles cases has moved health officials in Clark County, WA to declare a public health emergency. The first reported case was tracked back to a single person at nearby Portland (OR) International Airport on January 7. Four days later, a second infected person attended a …
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In the information age, images of the kindly, benevolent physician may conjure up quaint memories of Marcus Welby, but an article just published in The New York Times suggests that the simple act of being nice to patients can improve the prospects for positive outcomes. Authored by a pair of social psychologists from Stanford University, the piece maintains that a warm, reassuring approach to patient interactions, especially when discussing their health, can actually help symptoms …
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