Practice Management
Urgent Message: Medical and non-medical waste produced by urgent care centers must be handled in accordance with federal, state, and local regulations. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that garbage is public property once it is set on the curb.1 The Supreme Court opined that “[i]t is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members …
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Patrick O’Malley, MD; Albert Botchway, PhD; Laurel Stoimenoff, PT (ret.); and Lindsey E. Fish, MD, on behalf of the College of Urgent Care Medicine Over the past 15 years, there have been significant changes in urgent care (UC) medicine. First and foremost, this is a rapidly expanding field of medicine as urgent care centers now provide more than 200 million visits a year performed in more than 14,000 locations. Additionally, urgent care centers have transitioned …
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Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc My artificial intelligence (AI) awakening wasn’t a lightning bolt but a slow current—a series of small jolts. I kept encountering people who seemingly talked about AI all the time—fluent in the lingo and referred to by others as “AI gurus.” From their conversations, it was clear they were putting AI into real operations—analyzing data, streamlining tasks, even building custom AI tools and agents. But it was still as if they …
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Over the last few months, I’ve had the privilege of spending time with Lou Ellen Horwitz, my predecessor and now past CEO of the Urgent Care Association (UCA), as part of my onboarding. She’s been generous with her knowledge and perspective, helping me understand the many administrative details that keep UCA and our affiliates running smoothly. That investment of time has been invaluable, and I’m grateful for her continued support during this transition. At the …
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Tricia Krueger, CPC, is RCM Coding Supervisor for Experity. ICD-10 has been ever changing since it was first adopted 10 years ago. Each year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) revise, add, and delete diagnoses to better suit the conditions, including the conditions that present in urgent care centers. These changes reflect advances in clinical understanding and the need for more precise documentation in fast-paced care settings. While ICD-10 changes can happen semi-annually, …
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The credit-card-on-file practice requires a patient’s credit card at the time of service, which is used to cover balances after an insurance claim adjudicates. In addition to increasing total collections, charging the card on file also enables an urgent care to capture payments more quickly than time-consuming and costly collection efforts, such as mailing statements. In an Experity analysis of 392,699 comparable Blue Cross Blue Shield urgent care visits in 2024, 80% of patient responsibility …
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Urgent Message: Offers to buy urgent care centers typically follow due diligence processes, and the assets are valued within predictable market ranges. Offers to purchase a center that fall outside usual and customary parameters should be evaluated with scrutiny and skepticism. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Selling your urgent care business may be an opportunity to reap a return on your investment. However, there could be buyers looking to take advantage of your enthusiasm and …
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Nikki Benedict Timely filing is a critical concept in medical billing that directly impacts claim reimbursement. Despite its importance, the specific requirements and terminology can vary across payer contracts, making it essential for billing teams to understand both the general rules and the payer-specific nuances. When reviewing a payer contract, timely filing requirements may be outlined under the following sections: Providers can find Medicare and Medicaid timely filing requirements by consulting Centers for Medicare & …
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My friends, we have come a long way together in the last 5 years! Let me remind you of how far. My first JUCM column in my second term as CEO at the Urgent Care Association (UCA) in July 2020 was an admonishment to us all: We had to come together if we were ever going to create change on a national level. Over the next 5 years, you did precisely that. Through tremendous adversity, …
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Over the 12-month period ending June 15, 2025, 29% of urgent care patients were children and young adults aged 21 years or younger, while 71% were patients aged 22 years or older, according to an exclusive analysis of 35 million patient visits recorded in the Experity EMR. Further, the chart demonstrates the age breakdown of the population of children and young adults who visited urgent care. This analysis omits visits for employer-paid services and workers …
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