Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Becoming the Employer of Choice for the Emerging Urgent Care Workforce

Urgent message: A tight labor market combined with stagnant real wage growth and shifting worker expectations has placed the onus on employers to rethink their approaches to attracting, engaging, and retaining talent. Thus, the challenge for talent-hungry industries such as healthcare is to fully reimagine their workplaces such that they become the “employer of choice” for the modern, millennial-dominated workforce. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc As a nation, the U.S. is well into what experts …

How Urgent Care is the Antidote to Traditional Doctors’ Offices

Urgent message: Changing consumer expectations have led experts to question the future viability of “traditional” doctors’ offices, but urgent care provides a model for shifting from “caregiver-focused” to “patient-centric” care. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. In the not-so-distant future of healthcare, the familiar query Is the doctor in? could very well be met with a …

Building Ethical Organizations and Teams

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine Urgent message: As consumers pay closer attention to the ethical behaviors of the companies they do business with, the topic of workplace ethics has garnered renewed interest. Hence, the urgent care operator who makes a concerted effort to build an ethical workplace culture lays the groundwork for patient loyalty, …

Establishing Success Habits for Leaders and Organizations

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Urgent message: High achievers across industries and professions all share a common trait: the ability to leverage the power of habit to ingrain positive behaviors that lead to success. Hence, urgent care operators that can cultivate great habits in themselves and their teams effectively lay the foundation for a thriving …

Developing a Reimbursement Policy for CME and Other Employee Expenses

Urgent message: Every urgent care center should have a clear policy outlining which employee expenses, including CME-related expenses, it reimburses and how reimbursement occurs. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Managers, owners, and supervisors in nearly every field need to be familiar with the process of reimbursing employees for costs incurred while doing company business. Whether …

Thinking Differently About Paid Time Off

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care, LLC and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Urgent message: As 24/7 connectedness becomes the norm in the modern workplace, innovative technology companies have begun exploring unlimited paid time off (PTO) policies as a way to promote better work/life balance. Could unlimited PTO also become a trend in a healthcare industry that is likewise becoming increasingly 24/7 …

Facility Design: Cultivating Collaboration in the Back Office

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Urgent message: To move patients through the center quickly, urgent care demands near-constant communication among providers and staff. Eliminating enclosed provider offices in favor of shared workspaces promotes back office collaboration while keeping providers focused on clinic activities in real time. Urgent care reflects the seismic shift occurring in healthcare—traditional, …

The Case for an Interprofessional, Postgraduate NP/PA Fellowship in Urgent Care

Christina Gardner, DHSc, MBA, PA-C; Alexandra Nassif, PA-C; Connie Brooks, MSN-FNP; and Kim Roe, MBA, RRT Urgent message: Postgraduate fellowship programs are essential to the development of highly trained providers who can support the ongoing growth of the urgent care marketplace in the midst of a national physician shortage. However, historically there have been view available to nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Introduction A 2017 report of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), predicted …

Successful Site Selection in Urgent Care

Urgent message: As a retail delivery channel for healthcare, success in urgent care depends on successfully executing the “retail” elements of the urgent care delivery model—the first of which is “location.” Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Urgent care differs from other types of medicine in that it adheres to a retail delivery model; successful urgent …

Urgent Care 2.0: Health Systems Taking the Retail Approach to the Next Level

Urgent message: Spurred by disruptive market entrants and burgeoning consumerism, health systems are increasingly adopting retail principles to better meet consumers’ shifting expectations. Thus, urgent care stakeholders, either as standalone operators or partners with a hospital/health system, must further expand upon their retail offerings in order to fend off increased competition. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for Practice Velocity, LLC and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of …