Practice Management
As the weather turns warmer and schools start letting out, urgent care centers can expect to see more patients presenting with certain illness and injuries—some of which can be deadly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just issued a report noting there were 493 outbreaks of waterborne diseases—many of them related to recreational waters—between 2000 and 2014, including 27,219 illnesses and eight fatalities. Up to a third of the outbreaks could be traced back …
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ChoiceOne/MedSpring, operators of more than 60 urgent care centers around the country, and life sciences company Quadrant Biosciences have entered a partnership to offer a new brain health assessment service at existing locations in Maryland and Texas. Called ClearEdge, the system was developed with experts at SUNY Upstate Medical University. It essentially packages together an array of functional assessments designed to monitor and track subtle changes in cognitive function, balance, and patient symptoms over time. …
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Blue Cross and Blue Shield says thousands of physicians continually break evolving North Carolina laws regarding prescriptions for opiates—but acknowledges the difficulties both of keeping track of those laws on the physicians’ part and enforcing them on the state’s part. The challenge may be especially great in regard to the NC STOP Act, which limits opioid prescriptions to 5 days for first-time patients with short-term pain (or 7 days if the patient had surgery). The …
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Long hours, an overabundance of bureaucratic tasks, and perceived lack of respect from coworkers and administrators are the perfect recipe for physician burnout, if Medscape’s 2018 Physician Burnout and Depression Report is to be believed. Another source cited—increasing reliance on electronic health records—may also be the gateway to reducing the risk for burnout, however, according to a new article published online by Advisory Board. The difference between an EHR’s potential to be a burden or …
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Concerns over the lifetime consequences of head injuries have led to countless protocols and regulations for athletes and victims of accidents or falls. Advances are being made on the clinical front, too—some of which may light the way for urgent care to play a bigger role. First, a study just published in JAMA Network Open suggests that patients who presented to emergency rooms with what was ultimately found to be mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) …
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CVS Health is one of the defendants in a federal lawsuit claiming that it and other companies failed to protect the HIV status of 6,000 patients in Ohio—not through an online data breach, but thanks to a poorly constructed envelope. The suit filed by three unidentified plaintiffs maintains that when CVS mailed letters to patients in the state’s HIV drug assistance program last year, the recipients’ HIV status was visible in the envelope’s glassine window. …
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Urgent care providers have become more attuned to signs of potential child abuse, realizing that the parents responsible might be nervous taking a child they’ve injured to their “regular” pediatrician. Visiting an urgent care center where the family may not be known can provide a false sense of security that the true nature of a child’s injuries would go unrecognized. There’s tons of information telling providers what to do about those suspicions, as well. We …
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We look at the advent of smart technology as a window to closer contact with patients and more efficient, secure communication among providers and various healthcare stakeholders. It also opens a door for technology companies with no history in healthcare to suddenly become major disruptors. While it’s too soon to know whether that would be a good or bad thing for patients, there’s no question it makes some cogs in the supply chain nervous. If …
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With international travel and increasing levels of antibiotic resistance both on the upswing, helping patients who present with any variety of infections has never been more challenging for the urgent care clinician. The Urgent Care Association will host a webinar on the subject on Thursday, June 7, from 1 to 2 pm, Central. Speaker Lori Swanson, RN, MHSA, CHC, compliance and qualify officer for Physicians Immediate Care in Illinois and Indiana, will review best practices …
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Humana’s military unit has filed suit against the federal Defense Health Agency in an effort to block the details of its $45 billion Tricare managed care contract from becoming public, as reported late yesterday by Law360. Humana Military is seeking a permanent injunction blocking the agency’s decision to disclose certain proprietary information provided by Humana as part of its bid for the Tricare contract, according to the complaint filed in Washington, DC federal court. Though …
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