Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Mandated Paid Sick Leave, FMLA, and the Complex Landscape of Absence Management

Urgent Message: To protect clinic continuity and avoid financial liabilities, urgent care operators must master the complex, overlapping patchwork of federal and state employee-leave laws to navigate paid-time-off traps, callouts, and defensible terminations. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Keywords: Family and Medical Leave Act; paid sick leave; paid time off; employee absence management; Americans with Disabilities Act; attendance policy The regulatory environment governing employee absence in the United States is a complex, overlapping patchwork of …

Retail Clinics Shrink By 33%

RETAIL CLINIC ROOFTOPS BY HOST Between May 2023 and June 2026, the number of health clinics hosted in retail settings in the United States fell from 1,750 to 1,166. This represents a 33% overall decline from the 2023 peak. The decline also includes a recent 15% drop since our previous analysis, which found 1,370 sites in operation from May 2023 through December 2024.1 The contraction began when CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart announced closures and has …

Opportunity Is Knocking. We Need to Answer.

Over the past year, I’ve written about telling our story, strengthening our voice, proving our value, and, most recently, Urgent Care’s evolution from a convenient alternative to an essential part of everyday healthcare. As I look at where we stand today, I believe we’re entering another important chapter. Healthcare is changing rapidly, and nearly every trend points in the same direction. Primary care physicians are retiring faster than they can be replaced. New physicians aren’t …

Coding Mistakes That Quietly Cost You Money

Brad Laymon, PA-C, CPC, CEMC Every clinician I work with wants to do right by their patients and their charts. Yet across the urgent care systems I consult with, the same quiet leaks show up repeatedly. None of these are dramatic errors. They may never trigger an audit flag. They simply shave a level off the visit, encounter after encounter, until the lost revenue becomes real. The most common leak I see is an abnormal …

The Next Chapter: From Alternative to Essential

As I continue to meet with operators, clinicians, policymakers, employers, and healthcare leaders, I continue to hear many of the same challenges: reimbursement challenges, rising healthcare costs, workforce shortages, limited access to primary care, and growing pressure on emergency departments. At the same time, I’m hearing something else: growing recognition of the important role Urgent Care plays in addressing these challenges. For years, Urgent Care was often viewed as an alternative, a convenient option when …

Onboarding and Credentialing Challenges for Urgent Care in Today’s Payer Environment

Kim Hardin Urgent care organizations continue to face growing operational pressure as payer requirements become increasingly complex. Among the most significant challenges impacting revenue cycle performance today are provider onboarding and credentialing delays. In an environment where staffing shortages, payer consolidation, and administrative burden continue to rise, efficient credentialing has become critical to financial stability and patient access. Credentialing is the process of verifying a provider’s qualifications, licenses, education, training, malpractice history, and eligibility to …

The Anatomy of a 1-Star vs 5-Star Google Review

While many urgent care operators measure their overall Google ratings—focusing staff on capturing as many “5-stars” as possible—few understand the specific staff behaviors and patient experience that drive positive and negative reviews. To identify the differences, Urgent Care Consultants analyzed the content of 3.1 million Google reviews across 3,665 urgent care centers. The table breaks down the specific themes driving positive and negative experiences. A positive gap indicates a theme more prevalent in 5-star reviews, …

Quantifying the Front Door: A Blueprint for Tracking Urgent Care Downstream Referrals and ROI

Urgent Message: Health systems must reframe urgent care from a low-margin cost center to a strategic front door that drives significant returns by utilizing technology to track and maximize “keepage”—the retention of high-value downstream referrals that otherwise leak out of the network. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Keywords: urgent care; referral management; downstream revenue; health system strategy; patient retention; return on investment Urgent care is no longer just an access point; it is the strategic …

A Call for Physician Specialty Recognition and Improved Training Pathways in Urgent Care

Cesar Mora Jaramillo, MD, FAAFP, FCUCM, DABFM With more than 15,000 centers and 200 million visits a year, urgent care centers (UCCs) play a critical role in the U.S. healthcare ecosystem.[1] Despite its impact and rapid growth, urgent care (UC) remains a unique clinical field that has not yet been matched with a standardized training or certification pathway for physicians. This needs to change. Practicing high-quality UC medicine requires a distinct skill set, including rapid …

Medicare 2026 Therapy Services Update: Key Changes and What Providers Need to Know

Cindy Dickey; Tricia Krueger, CPC The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has introduced several important updates to therapy services for calendar year (CY) 2026. These changes affect reimbursement thresholds, telehealth services, coding practices, and payment reductions. Providers—including physical therapists (PTs), occupational therapists (OTs), and speech-language pathologists (SLPs)—should understand these updates to ensure compliance and optimize billing practices. One of the most notable updates is the adjustment of the KX modifier threshold. For CY …

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