Practice Management
Hospitals in parts of Florida that were hit hard by Hurricane Irma are open for business and fully staffed, but they’ve got so many patients coming in with hurricane-related injuries and illness that the EDs are overflowing. Some of them have put out the word that urgent care would be a better place to go right now for nonemergent complaints, pointing out that they will be treated more quickly while also easing the burden at …
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Code 3 Emergency Partners is betting that an enclosed location where 65,000 people work and 65 million people pass through every year is probably a good place to set up an urgent care clinic. So they did, at D/FW International Airport in Dallas/Fort Worth. The clinic has the same capability to treat infections and lacerations, to take x-rays, and run ultrasounds as any other urgent care center—and a constant stream of passersby and workers who …
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Now that the U.S. has been battered by two hurricanes in quick succession from Texas to the Southeast, the urgent care community seems to have doubled its efforts to provide relief to those affected. In addition to efforts aimed at helping victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, East Coast urgent care operators are doing what they can for those caught in the path of Hurricane Irma. Florida Hospital announced it’s offering free video visits “until …
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Providence Health System wants to replace its 408-bed hospital in Washington, DC with a “health village” that will include urgent care and primary care facilities, a telehealth operation, and expanded post-acute care services. They also plan to include recreation space, such as walking trails, on the 30-acre property. Providence says there are simply too many hospital beds in its market, and that the health village concept is one that will better serve the surrounding community. …
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The upside of patients continuing to flock to urgent care is obvious: They get the care they need when they need it, instead of having to choose between waiting for days to see their primary care provider or heading to the emergency room with a complaint that isn’t actually emergent (meaning they’re clogging up the works there, and incurring higher healthcare costs to do so). The downside of this evolution is that sometimes PCPs are …
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The ongoing growth of the urgent care industry despite naysayers and a challenging payer landscape speaks to the commitment of individual physician owners who recognized the benefit of a different approach to practicing medicine—for themselves and for the patient. As we’ve mentioned here, one recent trend has seen hospital systems gobbling up individually owned urgent care operations. While the government keeps fairly close watch on mega mergers—sometimes blocking them in the interest of protecting an …
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Just days ago, we told you about an urgent care center in Texas opening its doors as a collection center for area residents to drop off relief supplies for victims of Hurricane Harvey. The even-better news is that more urgent care centers around the country continue to extend themselves to help. FastMed announced three of its Houston-area centers are offering free tetanus boosters through Sunday, September 10. The shots are available to anyone 18 and …
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Washington’s attorney general has filed suit against St. Joseph Medical Center, charging that the hospital has illegally withheld “charity care” from tens of thousands of low-income Tacoma-area residents for years. Specifically, AG Bob Ferguson says St. Joseph has erected “obstacles” that inhibit providing care to patients who may have trouble affording it. State laws in Washington require hospitals to verify the income of prospective charity patients, but allegedly St. Joseph staff were directed to ask …
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Nonbiased parties outside of the urgent care arena are picking up on the idea that many people who visit the emergency room don’t really need to be there—and there are more data demonstrating that all the time. Most recently, the International Journal for Quality in Health Care published research stating that 3.3% of ED visits are “avoidable” altogether. The data reflect more than 424 million ED visits by patients between 18 and 64 years of …
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When President Trump took office, he vowed to take steps to make life easier for business operators. The White House just announced one step in that direction would be reversing an Obama administration decision to make employers, including urgent care operators, report how much they paid workers and break down the data by gender, race, and ethnicity. Obama believed doing so would help quantify (and ultimately curb) pay discrimination, while Trump maintains that the process …
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