Practice Management
As long as 2 years after recovering from COVID-19, some patients who were healthy before becoming infected now experience blood clots, diabetes, neurological complications, fatigue, and mental health issues thought to be related to the virus. The authors of research published in the journal Nature measured disability adjusted life years (DALY) in patients who had recovered from COVID-19 or developed long COVID, with each DALY unit reflecting 1 year of healthy life lost due to …
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It’s well-established that patients value urgent care because it’s typically much more expedient than the emergency room, and certainly primary care practices. Proximity and savvy marketing may help you differentiate yourself from competitors who offer those same advantages, but are there even more basic considerations that draw patients to one locations vs another? New data released by Software Advice suggest that patients who choose independent healthcare practices vs those owned by large corporations do so …
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The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force reported 4 years ago that oral preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reduced the likelihood of HIV infection in adults at increased risk for infection. At the time, offering PrEP in urgent care was a controversial prospect; while there was little debate as to the public health benefits, some UC operators found the complex side-effects profile daunting for a setting largely dedicated to episodic care. Now a meta-analysis of newer PrEP regimens …
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The challenges of staffing rural urgent care centers has spurred some operators to get creative in order to meet patient demand. The question is, are some getting a little too creative in billing for their services? These murky waters have led to two individuals—an urgent care physician-owner and his office manager—being charged with healthcare fraud in Missouri. The United States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Missouri alleges that the pair “conspired to make false statements …
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Educating the public on the benefits of urgent care vs the emergency room and other settings is a central challenge in the urgent care industry. This is especially true when it comes to getting through to patients who will at some point experience quintessential urgent care-worthy symptoms like cough, sore throat, and eye infection. The results of a recent poll that Cigna posted on LinkedIn, asking Where should you go for care if you are …
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A few months ago, JUCM News told you about QuikTrip’s rollout of urgent care centers (branded under the name MedWise) leveraging the real estate, marketing, and branding expertise of its gas stations. Apparently word is getting out, as an article on the initiative published by KFF Health News recently has been picked up by USA Today and various metropolitan newspapers around the country. Urgent Care Association CEO and regular JUCM contributor Lou Ellen Horwitz is quoted extensively throughout the piece—confessing that she was skeptical about QuikTrip’s plans …
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It’s not unusual for patients presenting to urgent care to have elevated blood pressure that doesn’t necessarily indicate that they have hypertension. Even extreme blood pressure may not mean the patient needs to be dispatched to the emergency room. There are any number of possible explanations for high BP reading besides “hypertension” in urgent care patients—pain, anxiety, and stimulant use being just a few. An article just published in JAMA Internal Medicine highlights another possible …
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While it may be premature to call the upcoming months “COVID season,” it’s a fact that case and hospitalization rates are starting to climb in multiple U.S. states. As such, it’s a good time to reconsider the importance of keeping your coding on point. The consequences of getting it wrong could result in underpayment—clearly not good for any business—but the consequences could be far worse if improper coding results in patients and payers being billed …
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Whether due to a scarcity of candidates or hoops those candidates and their prospective employers have to jump through in order to meet state regulations, it takes a long time to bring a new healthcare provider on board. In fact, according to an article newly published by Becker’s Hospital Review, only employers in consulting, finance, and engineering have to look longer than the 59.5 days (median) it takes to hire a new provider. Bringing a …
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The wildfires raging through Maui are just the latest example of how environmental disasters place healthcare facilities in the position of having to provide care for the sick and injured in the community while also ensuring the needs of team members are met, not to mention guarding against threats to the facility itself. A recent report from NBC News told part of that story through the experience of Reza Danesh, MD, who runs an urgent …
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