Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

It May Be Tough to Find Good Staff These Days, but Beware Cutting Corners in Your Search

A post currently on the California Radiologic Health Branch (RHB) website—a resource for the state’s licensed radiology techs—should serve as a timely reminder to thoroughly check the backgrounds of prospective new hire. The missive recounts how one individual with an extensive rap sheet that includes convictions for sexual battery, false imprisonment, grand theft, and other felonies was able to use phony documents to gain employment as an RT in clinics, hospitals, and medical offices in …

One Problem with Monkeypox: The Names of the Variants, According to the WHO

Cases of monkeypox continue to grow worldwide, with 32,000 cases reported (11,000 of which have occurred in the United States), according to the World Health Organization. One aspect of the WHO’s response has nothing to do with facilitating vaccination or treatment, though. With a nod to what it calls “current best practices” for naming diseases, the WHO is looking for new names for monkeypox variants that steer clear of associating them with geographic regions. This …

A New Report Poses the Question of Whether Private Equity Money Is Good for Urgent Care

It’s generally perceived that robust investment is a sign of good health for a marketplace. And certainly if you’re an urgent care operator it’s good news when private equity ponies up funding to fuel your growth. A report just published by MedCity News raises the question of whether it as healthy for patients and the overall U.S. healthcare system, however. The concern, according to the article, is that PE could push to reduce costs by …

Another Mass Shooting—This One Shutting Down a Hospital. Your Response Has to Be Immediate

When six people were shot sometime after midnight in Memphis this Tuesday, the impact on the nearest hospital was a bit more complicated than preparing for multiple patients with traumatic injuries. Methodist North Hospital—located just a stone’s throw from the crime scene—was actually shut down for a time in the wake of the violence, with the clinical team dispatched to treat patients with gunshot wounds while other staff had to route incoming patients away from …

The Threat of Burnout Keeps Climbing in Urgent Care—and Not Just Among the Clinical Team

It’s been well-documented that the COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on clinicians, to the point that burnout is affecting more physicians, nurses, and advanced practice providers than ever. A viewpoint piece just published by the Journal of the American Medical Association draws back the curtain on another portion of your workforce whose own stresses over the past couple of years. Considering increased turnover among all healthcare workers between April and December 2020 and drawing on …

It’s Time to Revisit the Effect of Wait Times on Patient Satisfaction

As urgent care continues its resurgence from a couple of years in which patient volumes were precariously low and the healthcare landscape in general was turned upside down, it may be wise to remember what patients came to value about this setting in the first. Key among the attributes, historically, has been convenience. FIERCE Healthcare just published an article connecting the dots between wait times for medical care and patient satisfaction. The worst-case scenario cited …

As More Data Come to Light, Recommendations Concerning COVID Patient Isolation Get Murkier

Per the latest recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who’ve experienced symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection can stop isolating after 5 days, provided that they’ve been fever-free for 24 hours without taking fever-reducing medication and their symptoms have improved. People who’ve tested positive but experienced no symptoms can stop isolating after day 5 without conditions. New data just published by JAMA Network Open lean in the other direction, however. In a small (N=40) …

Monkeypox Is Now a U.S. Public Health Emergency

The federal government followed in the footsteps of the World Health Organization in officially declaring the ongoing monkeypox outbreak to be a public health emergency. In addition to qualifying the level of threat perceived due to the virus, the move will make deeper resources aimed at containing the outbreak available at multiple levels throughout the U.S. health system. Federal agencies are now authorized to fund development of and access to vaccines and therapies to fight …

CVS May Try Buying Its Way into the Primary Care Business Barely a week after we told you that Amazon plans to try its hand at providing healthcare services in the brick-and-mortar world by buying One Medical, CVS announced that it, too is taking another run at expanding its own menu of healthcare offerings. The company says it’s looking at possible primary care acquisition targets, with an eye toward buying them outright or simply taking …

Congress Opens the Door to Extend Reimbursement for Telehealth Services

Urgent care operators who offer telehealth services should be aware that the House of Representatives just passed the Advancing Telehealth Beyond COVID-19 Act. As the name implies, the legislation extends policies initiated to help facilitate access to healthcare as many patients shied away from face-to-face encounters in medical facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among those most applicable in the urgent care setting: Beneficiaries who fall under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services can receive …

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