Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Is Getting a Tank Full of Gas and a Strep Test in the Same Place a Good Thing? Maybe So

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 …

Don’t Jump to Conclusions If That BP Reading Seems Off; You Might Want to Check the Equipment

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 …

With COVID ‘Season’ Approaching, Don’t Let Sloppy Coding Put You in Jeopardy

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 …

Hiring a New Provider or Urgent Care Manager? You’re Going to Need a Lot of Patience

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 …

With Maui Devastated by Fires, UC Operators Are Both Providing and in Desperate Need of Care

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 …

Healthcare Companies Are Cutting Jobs—Bringing Them Closer to a Typical Urgent Care Model

MedExpress is the latest healthcare company to announce downsizing designed to trim operating expenses. WSAZ News in Huntington/Charleston, WV reported the company is laying off all registered nurses at 150 locations as early as September 7, in concert with even more widespread layoffs in the UnitedHealth Group/Optum universe. It’s a move not likely to be adopted by other urgent care operations, which for the most part do not count RNs among their clinical teams to …

Extreme Heat Calls for Extreme Readiness in the Urgent Care Center

Uncommonly high temperatures this summer have led increasing numbers of patients to seek care for heat-related conditions at hospitals and urgent care centers across the country. Even in Florida, where people are prepared for extreme heat, emergency room and urgent care operators say they’re seeing more patients with symptoms of heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and other conditions than in recent years. According to a report from WUSF Public Media in Orlando, urgent care centers in …

Posting Health Info on Your Website Is a Great Idea. Featuring the ‘Derek Jeter Herpes Tree’ Is Not

Offering information on various disease states, seasonal health concerns, and public health initiatives on your website is a great way to build engagement and establish a reputation as a trustworthy partner in patients’ wellbeing. Relying on technology to populate webpages with that information can be a great timesaver and help keep costs down—as long as that technology doesn’t run amok, as it apparently did recently on the website of a New York City urgent care …

Some Hospitals Are Taking Amazon Health Seriously. Should You?

Numerous companies that have been hugely successful in various aspects of the retail business keep trying to get a foothold in healthcare. The most notorious example would probably be Walmart, which has launched unsuccessful ventures in both the brick-and-mortar and virtual spaces. The latter is now of greater interest than ever to Amazon Clinic, which launched in November 2022 but just recently became accessible to patients in every U.S. state. This initiative may have a …

Is a Midsummer Bump in COVID-19 Hospitalizations a Harbinger of Another Tough Winter?

The midpoint of summer saw the steepest increase on COVID-19 since December 2022, leading some public health authorities and academics to wonder aloud whether we could see another tripledemic—simultaneous, high rates of COVID, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus—as winter approaches. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospitalizations for COVID-19 jumped 10.3% in the week ending July 15. Emergency room visits were also up for the week ending July 21. Given …

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