Practice Management
By now we’ve all gotten the point that patients want excellent care when they need it, which may not be when their primary care provider or a specialist they’d like to see is available. A new study from NRC Health reveals that the convenience factor is actually a higher priority than quality of care when those patients are deciding where to go. The survey included 223,000 healthcare consumers, 51% of whom said convenience and access …
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When we consider ways in which disease is passed from one person to another, we probably think first about the home, classrooms, offices, or modes of transportation. However, your workplace—the urgent care center—may also be the source sometimes. And the danger isn’t limited to the waiting room. A new study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology notes that stethoscopes can transfer germs from one patient to the next, and suggests that a standardized approach …
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The federal government shutdown is having a very real effect on access to healthcare for many Americans. We told you recently that clinics funded by the Indian Health Service are going without funding, leaving some patients who get their primary care at those facilities out in the cold. On the other side of the coin you’ll see federal workers who aren’t getting paid and may have some tough decisions to make about where their dwindling …
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Urgent care insiders and advocates have known it intuitively for a long time, but now data are bearing out the fact that urgent care centers really do help thin out the congestion (and associated cost) in emergency rooms—especially in areas where there are multiple locations to choose from. A multistate study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows there’s a 1.4% increase in ED visits by privately insured patients when urgent care centers are …
Read MoreUrgent care operators that offer occupational medicine in New York may want to consider what it would take to start offering telemedicine services if they’re not doing so already. The Empire State is taking a harder look at whether telemedicine could be a viable option to broaden access to clinicians for injured workers who otherwise might not get the care they need. One possible motive for the newfound interest: Industry observers have noted that New …
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has completed mailing new cards to the 61 million people covered by Medicare in the U.S., each with their own unique, randomly assigned Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI). The old cards were based on each person’s Social Security number, the widespread access to which left individuals open to identity theft. When the plan was rolled out to the public last April, CMS said it would take a year for …
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Public health officials in numerous states, most notably California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey are reporting significant flu activity—some exceeding even last year’s severe flu season. California has seen a relatively high number of deaths (42) for this point in the season. Roughly half of those have Top of Formoccurred in the elderly. Flu has been called “widespread” in New Jersey, to the extent that some hospitals there are imposing restrictions on people visiting hospitals. AtlantiCare …
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Feeling the pressure to improve outcomes while simultaneously cutting costs, an ever-growing number of hospitals and health systems are investing heavily in urgent care. Of particular note are four health systems that splurged in the fourth quarter of 2018. Becker’s Hospital Review highlighted the following in a recent post: San Francisco-based Dignity Health partnered with GoHealth Urgent Care to buy six urgent care centers operated by Golden State Urgent care. McLaren Health Care, in Grand …
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Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine are enlisting clinicians, patients, caregivers, and schools to help evaluate Emory’s own TBI Evaluation and Management (TEaM) Toolkit, with the intention of rolling it out to health systems ultimately. The toolkit was devised to boost recovery in children with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). The aim of the Emory study will be to show that validated “clinical practice and education for patients, caregivers, clinical providers and schools is …
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An article just published online by NBC News takes potshots at the cost of healthcare marketing, implying (and outright stating, through “experts” quoted in the piece) that it raises healthcare spending unnecessarily and causes some consumers to fret over diseases they didn’t even know existed. It cites data, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, revealing that overall healthcare marketing spending is up to $30 billion a year (nearly twice what it …
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