Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Physicians Stay In Jobs With Greater Sense of Community

Community relationships are important considerations for provider organizations looking to recruit and retain physicians in rural markets, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers surveyed 1,074 physicians practicing in federally designated clinician shortage areas across 33 states, including 351 in rural communities. Among rural physicians, 75.5% expected to remain at their current practices for more than 2 years, compared with 71.2% of urban physicians. Rural physicians also were more likely to feel …

Negative Notes Diminish Patient Trust

A study published in JAMA Network Open found that approximately 1 in 6 U.S. adults reported encountering disrespectful or judgmental language in medical records or healthcare encounters. In a nationally weighted survey of 500 adults from November 21 to December 4, 2025, 17.1% of patient portal users reported seeing this type of language in their own or a loved one’s medical records. Examples of potentially judgmental descriptions include labeling patients as “noncompliant” or “resistant.” Among …

Urgent Care Acuity Grows Complemented By Rise in Utilization

In a new trend report that examines healthcare spending in the United States based on a large claims database, Trilliant Health notes that from 2018 to 2025, there was a measurable shift toward higher-acuity procedure codes across all of healthcare. In urgent care specifically, use of higher-acuity codes such as CPT 99204 increased from 22.4% in 2020 to 42.3% in 2025, while at the same time, lower-acuity codes like CPT 99202 declined from 17.8% to …

Change of Scenery: Physicians Find Variety of Helpful Fixes For Burnout

A national study of physicians presented in JAMA Network Open found actions, such as changing schedules or taking a vacation, were associated with substantial improvements in burnout or professional fulfillment. Physicians completed a burnout/professional fulfillment survey, and 6 months later, completed the same survey again. The researchers identified 87 physicians out of the 359 participants whose scores happened to improve substantially during those 6 months (24.3%). Of those physicians, 30 agreed to follow-up interviews. During …

Connecticut Invests in Healthcare Workforce With New Housing Project

The city of Waterbury, Connecticut, and the state are partnering on a new affordable housing development designed to help attract and retain healthcare workers. The project will create 47 studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom units near Saint Mary’s Hospital and Waterbury Hospital, according to the local CT Mirror. Rents are expected to range from $1,000–$1,500 for households earning up to $80,000 annually. The $15 million development will receive about $11.6 million in state funding, some of …

Half of Patients ‘Always’ Follow Your Advice When Unsure About Vaccines

A new analysis conducted by the Yale School of Public Health and a global communications firm suggests that today’s vaccine hesitancy is not simply a rejection of healthcare professionals or scientific evidence. Among people surveyed who would not give their children vaccines or would only give their children only some of the recommended vaccines, personal experience was the leading influence on how the parents arrived at their vaccine views, according to the 2026 Edelman Trust …

NP, PA Roles Can Be Tough To Fill, Especially For Urgent Care

Advanced practice providers (APPs) have become increasingly important in healthcare’s overall workforce strategy, especially in urgent care. A small national survey of 327 healthcare facility leaders by CHG Healthcare found that 92% of respondents considered APPs very or extremely important to their workforce strategy, and 96% expected to maintain or increase APP utilization in 2026. The overall findings suggest that APPs are being used not simply to fill vacancies but as part of longer-term strategies …

Pregnant Women Don’t Need To Stop Inhaled Corticosteroids: Study

Clinicians can be reassured that evidence supports recommendations (eg, Global Initiative for Asthma) that pregnant women with asthma can continue use of inhaled corticosteroids (ICSs) during pregnancy, as published in JAMA Network Open. In the study of 6,105 pregnant women in South Korea, 2,108 women (34.5%) continued ICS during the first trimester and were compared to 3,997 women (65.5%) who discontinued ICS during the first trimester. Researchers found ICS continuation was not associated with significantly …

Urgent Care Beats Primary Care On Speed of Service

A survey of 1,014 U.S. healthcare consumers suggests that speed remains urgent care’s strongest competitive advantage, and it’s also the factor consumers value most, according to data from branding firm Monigle. Urgent care outperformed primary care on consumers’ perception of “help you get care quickly” (71% vs 68%), but primary care scored better on all the other measures included in the survey. The largest gaps between urgent care and primary care appeared in the ability …

Clinicians Rewrite Vast Majority of AI-Drafted Portal Messages

Researchers from Dartmouth found that when using large language models (LLMs) to draft responses to patient portal messages, clinicians may spend more time editing the AI responses than it would take to write them manually in the first place. Using more than 610,000 patient portal messages, the researchers created a training dataset of 144,000 clinician–patient conversations and tested multiple commercial and locally hosted LLMs against expert-written responses. In the study —which was presented at the …

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