Practice Management
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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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Waiting for test results can be a nerve-wracking experience for patients, and many are accessing results in a portal before their clinician even gets a look. In a nationally representative survey of 4,982 U.S. adults, 68.6% of respondents said they viewed their test results through a patient portal before hearing from their healthcare practitioner. Among those who viewed results first, 6.6% reported poor understanding of what the results showed and what they meant for their …
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For patients with limited English proficiency (LEP), a healthcare visit can be somewhat frustrating for them and for their clinician. That’s why several federal laws require certain healthcare entities to offer interpreter services. A survey of 230 primary care physicians recently published in JAMA Network Open revealed that only 50.4% of respondents regularly used at least 1 type of professional medical interpreter, while 53.0% regularly relied on ad hoc interpreters, such as family members or …
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