Practice Management
The ink is barely dry on agreements allowing more telemedicine than ever before, but there are indications that some corners of the healthcare marketplace are already moving on toward The Next Big Thing: text-based medical encounters. A Denver-based startup called CirrusMD has pulled together $7 million in capital it plans to devote to expanding what’s thought to be the industry’s first “text-first” workflow. CirrusMD has cut its teeth on working with large health systems and …
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There are more physician-employees than physician-owners across the practice landscape, according to new data from the American Medical Association—the first time under 50% of patient care physicians have an ownership stake in their medical practice since the AMA started keeping track. While the data do not reflect urgent care specifically (including this market as “other”), they do show the share of physicians with ownership stake in a medical practice fell to 47% in 2016. That’s …
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Here’s what we know: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is going to stop including Social Security numbers on Medicare ID cards. Here’s what we don’t know: How this is going to work, and how it’s going to affects healthcare providers. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act requires CMS to remove Social Security numbers from Medicare cards due to increasing risk for identity theft and fraud. The year-long process of issuing new …
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The 2016–2017 flu season is far enough behind us that health system numbers crunchers can assess how well the vaccine performed—and it’s definitely a mixed bag. While it was a good match for the predominant strain (Type A H3N2) and was around 42% effective in preventing illness severe enough to send patients to the doctor’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admits that it was essentially ineffective in protecting people age 65 and …
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The last thing ill-feeling patients want to hear from you is that they have to go to another location for some tests. (And, realizing that, it’s probably the last thing you want to tell them.) As such, the ability to run lab tests on site not only makes life easier for patients who value convenience; it is also becoming a clinical imperative. The good news is that setting up your urgent care operations to offer …
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The weather is warm, schools are getting out, and people are venturing off into the wild for outdoor adventure—and to face the perils of tick-infested woods and fields. Visits to urgent care sparked by fear of tick-borne illnesses are sure to follow. In addition to well-known (though still relatively uncommon) diagnoses like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the newly identified Human Powassan (POW) virus can be deadly in some cases. Its symptoms are …
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It’s tough out there for retailers—which means it’s at least as tough for the building managers and owners that do business with them. While urgent care centers used to be considered a “bad fit” (along with all medical facilities), they’re now becoming the darlings of retail space developers. National UC Realty puts the number of active urgent care locations at 9,600 and climbing, making the industry a presence that cannot be ignored on the real …
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Infectious disease is not an area one would expect urgent care to play an important role, typically. If a patient in a rural county needed to “see” an ID at an urban teaching hospital, though, a virtual visit facilitated by the local urgent care center might be the patient’s best shot at getting the care they need in a timely manner. That kind of value has been demonstrated in a new study of infectious disease …
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More American workers are failing tests for illegal drugs these days than in many years. Quest Diagnostics reports that 4.2% of the 8.9 million employee drug tests it administered last year came back positive; that’s the highest rate since 2004. Marijuana remains the most prevalent, though other drugs are also on the rise. This is especially surprising, given the fact that so many states have looser laws on marijuana use for medical or recreational purposes. …
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Members of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA) who work 8 to 20 hours a week in San Francisco eateries now have a place to go for walk-in care without paying anything out of pocket. Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care reached an agreement with the GGRA to provide at least four visits per year to its centers (more for GGRA members who work more hours, according to a formula worked out under the city’s Health Care …
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