Practice Management
Urgent care providers were not named among those most likely to be sued in Medscape’s recent Malpractice Report 2017, but a look at the research is likely to offer some insights that could help them lower their risk for landing in court. “Failure to diagnose/delayed diagnosis” was the reason for 31% of the lawsuits against physicians in the survey—the most prevalent among all causes mentioned. “Complications from treatment/surgery” was the second-most common answer (27%). Procedural …
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All the recent talk about Amazon’s plans to become a wholesale pharmacy distributor seems to have been exactly that—just talk—as industry analysts have learned the online retailer has no intentions (currently) to start storing and shipping medications. Rather, they expect the company to use the pharmacy licenses it obtained in 12 states recently for medical devices and supplies. The investment firm Jefferies learned that Amazon went so far as to tell officials in Tennessee and …
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As many healthcare systems continue to break ground on their own urgent care facilities and others scan the horizon for operations ripe for acquisition, a third option is starting to pick up steam: Some hospitals are contracting with third parties to run their urgent care business in the hope of ensuring their in-house “startups” are operated by industry veterans. Physicians Immediate Care and OSF Healthcare have already entered into such an arrangement, as have Premier …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is intent on driving down inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics, and using U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week and World Antibiotic Awareness Week to unveil a new educational campaign called Be Antibiotics Aware: Smart Use, Best Care. The CDC says at least 2 million Americans become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria annually—with at least 23,000 dying as a result. With over 160 million patient visits every year, according to the Urgent Care …
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It’s a strange phenomenon, but there are data to back it up: The emergency room at St. Charles Bend in Bend, OR is getting more traffic—it’s just not necessarily treating more patients. Nearly 5% of the people who check in to the ED leave without being seen (LWBS) because the wait is simply too long. That’s nearly three times the national average. The Bulletin newspaper in Bend noted that LWBS was the most common diagnosis …
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Patients visit urgent care centers because they’re convenient places to get quality care, and often at a time when the primary care office is closed. Those advantages—and the goodwill they engender—go out the window when patients waste a trip only to find your doors locked and the lights out, however. With Thanksgiving next week, make sure you’ve done everything you can to make the public aware of when you will and will not be open. …
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The Federal Department of Transportation (DOT) is getting with the times and adding opioid screens to its drug testing program. Specifically, providers who conduct physicals and assessments for the DOT will have to include hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, and oxycodone in their screens as of January 1, 2018. In addition, methylenedioxyamphetamine has been added as an initial test analyte, and methylenedioxyethylamphetamine has been removed as a confirmatory test analyte. Adding the four semisynthetic opioids has been …
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An urgent care center in Florida is being forced to shut down, not because it couldn’t draw enough patients or provided bad care, but because of a highly charged disagreement over the nature of its start-up funds. Here’s what everyone agrees on: A Florida woman provided substantial funds to help a new urgent care center get going 2 years ago. After that, it gets harder to separate fact from fiction in the case of a …
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Rural healthcare is such an entity unto itself that Utah is in the midst of celebrating an official Rural Health Week right now, with the stated purpose of drawing attention to efforts to improve the care available to residents who live in less-traveled parts of the state. Coinciding with that, the American Hospital Association (AHA) is investigating what role urgent care can play in filling “access gaps” in medically underserved regions. AHA’s Task Force on …
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Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is collaborating with MDLive to put more patients in touch with providers using remote hookups via an MDLive app, with an average wait time of less than 10 minutes. The insurer says it recognizes “the potential of telehealth to help providers deliver their services in a more cost-efficient setting…and facilitate value-driven care for patients.” That level of access is especially important in areas where ill patients would have …
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