Practice

As kids count the days until schools get out for the summer, parents may be scrambling to meet requirements for pre-camp physicals and address vaccination shortfalls. As such, some urgent care operators see this time of year as an opportunity to build foot traffic and gain new patients. Cottage Urgent Care in Santa Barbara Country, California is one. As reported by the Santa Barbara News-Press, Cottage offers discounted physicals for local students signed up for …

As restaurants, hotels, and bars in beach towns and other warm-weather travel destinations spring back to life after winter dormancy, ski areas are preparing for their off season. Either way, it’s likely urgent care centers are also scaling up or down in anticipation of seasonal changes in their patient populations. Tahoe Forest Health System’s urgent care locations in Tahoe City and Truckee, CA, and Cape Cod Healthcare’s UCC in Osterville, MA are two among many …

At the outset of a quality-improvement project at Intermountain Health’s urgent care network,  48% of patients received a prescription for antibiotics; by the end of the project, that figure was down to 33%. As reported in a paper published by JAMA Network Open, the interventions credited with that reduction included educating providers and patients; employing various EMR tools; a benchmarking dashboard that was accessible to all providers; and a media campaign. The data reflected 493,724 …

Patients come to your urgent care center for very important, personal, and specific reasons—most often because they’re ill or injured and need your help. So, it’s only logical that they would need a compelling reason to leave before they’ve even been seen by one of your providers. According to the results of a survey by the Urgent Care Association, the top reason is one that could be controllable to a large degree; wait time was …

Not too long ago, we shared news about a Mayo Clinic Proceedingsstudy that found only 57.1% of respondents would choose to become a physician again. That should have come as no surprise, in light of other pieces of the data—particularly the revelation that 62.8% of respondents claimed at least one manifestation of burnout. Now comes news that many clinicians may be either dealing with or trying to prevent going down that road by cutting back …

It’s unlikely that an urgent care operation could build a robust marketing presence without savvy use of social media. From basic Facebook pages to more sophisticated use of Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms, the only real limits are in the user’s field of vision. The same source of potentially rich rewards is also a minefield where one misstep can ruin the center’s reputation, however. The same goes for individuals within the operation, of course. …

An after-hours fire that struck St. Peter’s Urgent Care – North in Helena, MT should serve as a wake-up call for any urgent care operators who are unsure whether they’ve taken adequate preventive steps and have a plan in place in case such a disaster does occur. As reported by the Independent Record, the source of the blaze was a lithium battery that caused a printer to overheat. It tripped the alarms and sprinkler system …

The odds of seeing a car or other vehicle come crashing through the front of your urgent care center are awfully small—until it happens, of course. Imperial Health Urgent Care in Lake Charles, LA was on the receiving end of just such an event recently when a driver apparently shifted their vehicle into “drive” instead of “reverse” and plowed through the front end of the facility. As reported by KPLC 7 News, there were no …

While some purists may bristle at the notion, it’s a fact that an abundance of virtual and in-person options has allowed individuals the freedom to do more comparison-shopping for healthcare providers than ever before. As an article just published by the Harvard Business Review notes succinctly, when it comes to their medical care “patients in the United States aren’t loyal customers.” In fact, it goes on to reveal, they’re likely to access care from between …

Anyone with a working knowledge of urgent care services knows it’s typical for an urgent care center to offer x-rays on site. And even if the general public has a vague awareness of that, they could probably stand some reminding—especially if you have the opportunity to also let them know that you’re investing in your business so you can take even better care of them. Graham County Urgent Care and Family Practice in North Carolina, …