Practice Management
It’s been more than a year since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that opioids not be used to treat chronic back pain. Unfortunately, too many prescribers have yet to get the message, according to new data from an NPR-Truven Health Analytics Health Poll. The data, reflecting the experiences of 3,002 patients participating in a telephone survey, show that 40% of the visits to a doctor for low back pain ended with a …
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Direct primary care—in which practices bill patients recurring fees (often monthly) that cover many services without additional charges—is faltering, with the closure of two pioneers of the model recently. Qliance Medical Management and Turntable Health have both decided to close up shop, citing difficulties in securing funding to update services (eg, by offering a more urgent care-like level of care) and invest in technologies that would facilitate virtual care. Nonetheless, direct primary care continues to …
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Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore has added its voice to the chorus decrying excessive costs for patients visiting hospital emergency rooms for episodic care. What’s more, new data it just revealed indicates the odds of getting overcharged are greater if you’re a minority or uninsured. Researchers considered the billing records for more than 12,000 U.S. hospital-based emergency physicians, finding that on average adult patients in the ED are charged 340% more than what Medicare allows …
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The practice of physicians dismissing patients from their care seems to be on the uptick in recent years, according to a new report in JAMA Internal Medicine. Roughly 90% of the 794 practices that were part of the study have “fired” patients in the past 2 years—with 8% saying they’ve terminated relationships with ≥51 patients in that time. The greatest portion of participants (67%) has let up to 20 patients go. Only 10% have not …
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One component of President Trump’s proposed budget could have significant impact on urgent care staffing if it remains part of the final version ultimately approved by Congress. Specifically, Trump’s plan—which is likely to be substantially rewritten as it goes through the House and Senate—would ensure 6 weeks of paid leave for both mothers and fathers after the birth of a baby. Some large employers have already instituted similar policies voluntarily, but smaller companies (eg, many …
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While family physicians remain the most commonly sought clinicians among recruiters, urgent care physicians jumped from 20th just 2 years ago to 12th in Merritt Hawkins’ 2017 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives. Given that primary care physicians are the backbone of the urgent care provider workforce, it’s expected that recruitment and retention will continue to be increasingly competitive. More and more, top employee physicians (as opposed to owner/operator physicians) are being courted …
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Some urgent care providers have expressed concern that they could be the next subjects of Department of Justice scrutiny in the wake of eClinicalWorks agreement to settle federal charges. Those fears stem from the idea that incentive payments they received from eClinicalWorks could be viewed as ill-gotten gains. (As we told you just days ago, the company had been sued over charges it falsely certified that its EHR met all government criteria and that it …
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While convenient access to quality, affordable care has been the defining characteristic of the urgent care setting from its inception, the growth of the industry has been fueled by constant innovation and responsiveness to the evolving needs and preferences of the patient. Today, that includes on-the-spot lab testing. Languishing for hours in a hospital waiting area is a miserable prospect when patients are feeling ill, so they’re likely to choose an urgent care center over …
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It’s official: New York City is now the latest entity to forbid hiring companies of any kind—including urgent care centers—from asking prospective employees how much money they made in previous positions. Though it won’t take effect until October, a bill to that effect was signed into effect just last week. The intent is to help close the gap in average salary between male and female workers. The rationale is that anyone who made less money …
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ plan to transition from a Social Security number-based ID system to a randomly generated identifier is moving forward. The agency won’t start mailing new cards until April 2018, and the whole process will take nearly 2 years to complete, but in the meantime CMS is rolling out a provider- and patient-awareness campaign to assure the transition is as smooth as possible. The new Medicare beneficiary identifier (MBI) will …
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