Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

The Case for Relationship based Clerical Care

Urgent message: Embedding a clerical component within a relationship-based care approach has been shown to improve both financial outcomes and patient satisfaction. Noel Clinton, BS Introduction When we hear the term “relationship-based care,” we tend to think first about the relationship between the clinical staff and the patient. However, a prospective program as Bassett Healthcare in Cooperstown, NY has shown that positive patient care and improved financial outcomes are also a result of developing a …

Coding X-Rays Ordered by Outside Docs, G-code for Drug Testing, and 99051 for Scheduled Visits

DAVID STERN, MD (Practice Velocity) Q. We have quite a few primary care physicians who regularly send patients to our urgent care center for x-rays. These patients have a prescription for the x-ray service, and they don’t want to be seen by the urgent care doctor. I have several questions related to this service: Should we collect the urgent care copay (or) radiology imaging services copay (which is usually $0)? Should we code S9083 to …

SellingWellness Services to Employers

Somewhere between the episodic nature of the typical urgent care visit and the steady relationship between patient and primary provider lies a need for employers—your occupational medicine customers and prospects—to support the health of their employees. This need may be especially great with many companies having trimmed their workforces; fewer employees doing more work than ever before means there is real economic value in keeping those workers well and on the job.

Protecting the Urgent Care Center from Sexual Harassment Claims

Urgent message: Sexual harassment claims can be costly for an urgent care operator, not tomention ruinous to a center’s reputation. An urgent care center should protect itself by having firm policies and procedures in place to prevent and resolve sexual harassment issues. Alan Ayers, MA, MAcc, Experity Sexual harassment emerged as a major human resources issue in the 1990s. Victims of alleged sexual harassment – who can be men or women – sometimes find sympathetic …

Too Big to Fail—Urgent Care Lessons from Toyota

John Shufeldt, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP In his book, How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, Jim Collins discusses the five markers or stages of decline and how a company can identify these stages and reverse itself even after large-scale defeats along the way. (Or, as Bluto (John Belushi) said in Animal House, “Was it over when the Germans bombed Peral Harbor?”) Applying those stages to the rough patch of road …

Understanding and Embracing the Phrase ‘It Depends’

Developing Data: March, 2010

In early 2008, UCA revamped its annual survey in conjunction with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University with the goal of assuring that the UCA Benchmarking Committee’s efforts produced a scientifically valid report. Here, we present some of the data from this landmark survey. In this issue: What occupational medicine services – if any – are most commonly available in responding urgent care centers? The question regarding occupational medicine was just one segment …

Consult Codes, Injection Codes, and Coding for Diabetes Education and In-House Dispensing

Q. My codes for consults seem to suddenly be getting denied as invalid. I checked my CPT book, and the codes are still listed as valid. What’s going on? Question submitted by multiple urgent care billers A. Yes, you are right that the consultation codes (99241-99245, 99251-99255) are still valid per CPT, as published by the AMA. CMS, however, has decided to no longer reimburse for those codes and has now changed the status indicator …

Using Evidence-based Care Paths

Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” This was never more apparent to me than a few Mondays ago when I was paraded in front of a number of primary care doctors who questioned the use of “care paths” in urgent care medicine. The leader of the mob was a gentleman who was the patriarch of a local family practice clinic. The meeting opened this way. “I …