Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Image Check: Impact of Employee Appearance on the Patient Experience

Urgent message: Patients often infer quality on the basis of outward appearances. Adopting a policy that addresses clothing, grooming, and body art can help balance the need to project a professional image in the urgent care center and to ensure workplace safety with employees’ desire to express themselves. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity Remember the popular 1990s advertising slogan “Image is everything”? What was back then a trendy catchphrase created to peddle expensive …

A Process Approach to Differentiating Your Urgent Care Brand by Ensuring That Patients Leave Satisfied

Urgent message: Rapid growth of the urgent care industry has led to increased competition but little differentiation among urgent care providers, which consumers tend to view as “pretty much the same.” The opportunity for urgent care is thus to foster patient loyalty by creating differentiated brands, which starts by taking a process approach to the patient experience. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Urgent care is maturing into a big business. In 2015, the industry’s nearly …

The Sword and the Shield: Best Hiring Practices for Urgent Care Facilities

Urgent message: It is imperative that urgent care centers utilize the various tools at their disposal to recruit the best candidates, while implementing best practices that mitigate the potential for lawsuits. DAMARIS L. MEDINA, ESQ. Urgent care is one of the fastest growing segments of American health care. Historically, many urgent care facilities were considered small businesses because they employed fewer than 15 people, making them exempt from certain hiring discrimination claims under The Federal …

A Return on Investment Approach to Urgent Care Marketing

Urgent message: In a volume-driven business like urgent care, marketing should be viewed as an investment with a financial return that can be measured in order to allocate the center’s advertising dollars among the tactics most effective in generating patient revenue. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity Success in the “business” of urgent care boils down to one factor: “feet through the door.” That’s because once a center’s fixed costs are covered, each additional …

The Role of Urgent Care in an Integrated Care Delivery System: Insights from Kaiser Permanente

Urgent message: As the Affordable Care Act encourages greater integration of health insurers, hospitals, and physicians, urgent care will play an important role in increasing patient access, improving clinical outcomes and reducing health care costs. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc, Experity Hospitals across the country are partnering with doctors and health insurers—linked by an electronic health record (EHR)—to form accountable care organizations (ACOs) as a way to control health care expenditures by coordinating patient care. …

Head in the Game: Cultivating the Mindset of a Successful Urgent Care Operator

Urgent message: Just because you build it, patients won’t necessarily come. As entrepreneurs, successful urgent care center owners must market their services to the community, innovate with new services to fill excess capacity, and create positive patient experiences that spur repeat visits and positive word-of-mouth. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity One needn’t look further than the 20,000+ physicians already practicing in urgent care centers nationwide to grasp just how attractive this business model …

Psychiatric treatment as an urgent care model

Urgent message: Offering mental health services in an urgent care setting could facilitate treatment for conditions such as depression and help eliminate the stigma associated with psychiatric care. Introduction Consumers value urgent care for its on-demand access to medical treatment without waiting to schedule a doctor’s appointment and for its cost savings over hospital emergency rooms (ERs). While urgent care centers have historically focused on treating coughs, sniffles, cuts, scrapes, sprains and strains, the convenience …

Expert Perspectives on Telemedicine in Urgent Care

Urgent message: Telemedicine—or “at-home” medicine—affords unique business opportunities to urgent care providers who can overcome barriers to adoption such as reimbursement. Introduction Telemedicine is a topic that frequently comes up among UCA’s membership as an area of interest. Some urgent care providers view telemedicine, or “at-home” medicine, as an opportunity; others see a threat. A lot of questions exist about telemedicine and with this roundtable, we’ve pulled together the unique experience of individuals who are …

An Urgent Care Operator’s Guide to Hiring and Managing a Lawyer

Urgent message: This article is a broad overview of how lawyers work and charge and what to do to avoid some of the most common pitfalls inherent in the attorney-client relationship. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity Success in business entails being prepared and there will be times when it’s unavoidably necessary for you, the urgent care operator, to engage the services of an attorney. From structuring and starting up the business, to reviewing …

HIPAA for Urgent Care Centers: A Primer

Urgent message: This article discusses potential penalties for violations of HIPAA and key steps urgent care centers should take in order to avoid such penalties. BART WALKER and MEGGAN BUSHEE Complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) can be a daunting challenge for smaller providers. As the urgent care industry grows, its providers will become much more visible targets for scrutiny by the federal government with respect to HIPAA compliance. In addition, …