Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Attention Turns to Improving Rural Healthcare—and How Urgent Care Can Contribute

Rural healthcare is such an entity unto itself that Utah is in the midst of celebrating an official Rural Health Week right now, with the stated purpose of drawing attention to efforts to improve the care available to residents who live in less-traveled parts of the state. Coinciding with that, the American Hospital Association (AHA) is investigating what role urgent care can play in filling “access gaps” in medically underserved regions. AHA’s Task Force on …

Are Urgent Cares Liable?

JOHN SHUFELDT, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP Full disclosure: I was not always the smooth, confident provider I hope I am today. No, there was a time when I would say or do things while practicing medicine that would shine a bright light upon my medical inexperience, naiveté, or general ignorance. To wit, the emergency medicine residents where I trained were pressed into servitude twice yearly to go out to the local high schools and perform …