Practice Management

Urgent care thrives on repeat visits and positive word-of-mouth from loyal patients. Although many urgent care centers track the percentage of new vs established patients—those who have been seen in the past 3 years—few measure frequency of use by individual patients. This is an important measure used in other service businesses, however, based on the assumption that customers who patronize their favorite businesses more often also spend more money, and encourage others (either in person and online) to patronize the business as well. A Practice Velocity study of over 5 millionRead More

Q: We had a patient present with multiple lacerations and were wondering how to bill, since some were repaired with sutures and some were repaired with staples. A: Laceration repair is billed based on the complexity, length of the repair, and the anatomic site. The repair can consist of sutures, staples, or wound adhesive (eg, Dermabond). The Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) manual classifies the complexity of the repair of wounds as being simple, intermediate, or complex. Simple repair is used when the wound is superficial, primarily involving epidermis, dermis, orRead More

Urgent message: Urgent care providers are valued for their ability to treat nonemergent acute healthcare needs efficiently, but in so doing they are also well positioned to identify other, underlying healthcare issues such as hypertension. Introduction Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and accounts for approximately 24% of all deaths.1 Many known risk factors are associated with heart disease, including high blood pressure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 46,000 deaths each year may be prevented through effective treatment of hypertension,Read More

Urgent message: “Winning” a lawsuit in which you’re the defendant runs a distant second to avoiding lawsuits altogether—never mind if you’re on the losing end and have to pay a judgment. Understanding relevant regulations and laws is the best way to stay out of court. Today’s healthcare providers must carefully navigate their way around complex laws and regulations which regulate, restrict, and impact their practices. Urgent care providers who fail to navigate within these laws may find themselves on the wrong side of a lawsuit or regulatory action. Here areRead More

  Urgent Message: Urgent care demands that providers meet goals for fast patient turnaround and positive patient experiences, which when combined with tight staffing makes recognizing and preventing provider burnout a priority for urgent care providers. It’s been said that providers are the lifeblood of any healthcare organization. Indeed, they’re the collective engines that make everything go, such that their focused engagement and dedicated patient care are critical for organizational success. But that dedication often leaves those same providers carrying a heavy mental and emotional burden—a burden that’s leading aRead More

There’s little evidence that emerging payment models (eg, concierge medicine, cash-only practices, and accountable care organizations [ACOs]) are gaining any serious traction in urgent care—but that doesn’t mean they’re not making headway elsewhere. ACOs, in particular, are growing in usage among physicians, according to the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2017. Usage of cash-only and concierge models is also growing, albeit much more modestly, as the graph below shows. Data source: Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2017. Available at: http://www.medscape.com/slideshow/compensation-2017-overview-6008547. Accessed April 11, 2017. Data reflect the responses of 19,270 physicians acrossRead More

Q: We are planning to open a new clinic that will offer both primary care and urgent care services. Can we use the same tax identification number (TIN) when we start negotiating contracts with insurance payors? A: Based on our experience with doing this many times, if you attempt to use the same TIN for both primary care (PC) and urgent care (UC), you are likely to see the following results: Some payors are likely to refuse to give both contracts to the same entity. Some will be fine withRead More

 Urgent message: Urgent care centers need engaged and effective operations leadership, which entails clearly defining managerial roles, individual skillsets and personality characteristics and also having a process for attracting, interviewing, and qualifying managerial candidates. Jim Clifton, the highly respected CEO of global performance and research leader Gallup, has often stated that hiring the right manager is by far the most critical decision a company makes. Given how multifaceted and demanding urgent care operations can be at times, this maxim rings especially true in our industry. Putting a competent, skilled urgentRead More