Practice Management
Louisiana lawmakers have passed a bill that would allow ambulances to deliver patients with non–life-threatening illnesses directly to urgent care centers in East Baton Rouge Parish. Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center has volunteered to accept low-acuity ambulance patients at its 24/7 urgent care facility as part of the pilot program. The legislation is expected to help address poor access to emergency care in the area since one hospital closed and another shut …
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Urgent care centers and other facilities often ask patients to rate their experiences. However, the Federal Trade Commission says online reviews that include too many details constitute a violation of patient privacy, even if the patients themselves provided the information. The problem is that some survey companies don’t make it clear that reviews will wind up on the internet. Most recently, the FTC reached a settlement with Practice Fusion, a cloud-based electronic health records vendor, …
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Do you know how to get to the MOB—or are you wondering why you’d even want to go there? More on that in a moment. Successful urgent center centers must provide a sufficiently positive experience that patients want to return, and tell others to do likewise. But great service doesn’t just happen; it’s the result of deliberate planning and coordination of systems, processes, policies, and people. When a patient approaches your center, what does he …
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The market for conducting Department of Transportation physicals just got a bit more urgent care-friendly in New York. As of June 1, chiropractors are no longer allowed to give DOT physicals for commercial motor vehicle drivers—giving urgent care operators that offer such services a leg up on expanding their occupational medicine business. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration contends that DOT physicals are outside a chiropractor’s scope of practice. Chiropractors are already lobbying to have …
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Southeast Michigan is seeing a surge of urgent care growth this spring—and industry watchers are saying operators can thank President Obama, in a roundabout way. Regional growth started to pick up speed after the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) was passed in 2010, fueled by an influx of newly insured patients who need care immediately, but who may have been steered into urgent care by employers hoping to stem rising emergency room bills. With …
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Recent data reported here illustrate the challenges—and advantages, given their evolving perception of the healthcare marketplace—of reaching patients in the “millennial” demographic (defined by Pew Research as those who turned ages 15–34 in 2015). Chris Behan will draw on 20 years of experience in internet healthcare marketing to offer 5 Tips for Engaging the Millennial Patient Online, a free webinar to be hosted by the Urgent Care Association (UCA) on Thursday, June 23, 1–2 p.m. …
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Urgent Team expanded its holdings in the southeast corner of the country to 29 locations with the purchase of Physicians Care and its eight locations in Tennessee. Headquartered in Nashville, Urgent Team now owns four brands—Urgent Team, Sherwood Urgent Care, Baptist Health Urgent Care, and Physicians Care—in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Physicians Care was founded by Bill Meadows, MD, who was also the founding president of the Urgent Care Association of America; he will remain …
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The knock on retail clinics like those found in retail chains and big-box stores is that they offer a limited menu of services, administered most often by nonphysicians. One pharmacy is bucking that trend by bringing a physician into the fold to create a hybrid community drugstore/ urgent care center that provides a higher level of care in a proper exam room. Sona Pharmacy + Clinic in Asheville, NC bills itself as “a different kind …
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Urgent care operators may have new leverage when negotiating reimbursements or appealing to cash-paying patients in North Carolina. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) says it has lost $280 million by covering residents under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”)—and in response, it’s filing for a 2017 rate increase of 18.8%. BCBSNC says higher-than-expected ED visits and orthopedic treatments (the cost of which could be greatly diminished if appropriate patients visited …
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Whether due to transportation issues, childcare needs, or concern about being exposed to others’ germs when they’re already not feeling well, some patients find “convenient care” not quite convenient enough. Remedy, an urgent care company in Austin, TX is one of a number of providers looking to fulfill their urgent care needs by leveraging the advantages of electronic communication to offer an old-fashioned convenience (namely, house calls). Designed to take convenient care to the next …
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