Urgent Care Refers 1 Patient in 50 to the ED

Urgent Care Refers 1 Patient in 50 to the ED

Urgent Message: Urgent care sends roughly 1 patient in 50 to the emergency department. Most of those referrals involve symptoms that call for imaging, laboratory testing, or monitoring that the clinic cannot provide. Some are emergencies identified during the visit for an ordinary complaint. Keywords: emergency department referral; emergency department transfer; urgent care referral patterns; practice variation; clinical documentation; urgent care operations Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Consider a scenario in which a patient writes …

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The Impact of an Urgent Care Point-of-Care Ultrasound Program on Patient Transfers to the Emergency Department

The Impact of an Urgent Care Point-of-Care Ultrasound Program on Patient Transfers to the Emergency Department

Urgent Message: Training urgent care providers to use point-of-care ultrasound resulted in fewer patient transfers to the emergency department for soft tissue/musculoskeletal and first-trimester pregnancy complaints, while also streamlining care in this single-center program. Keywords: point-of-care ultrasound; urgent care; emergency department transfer; soft tissue infection; musculoskeletal complaints; first-trimester pregnancy Lindsey E. Fish, MD, FCUCM; Genie Roosevelt, MD; Amanda G. Toney, MD Abstract Introduction: The use of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is expanding into multiple clinical areas …

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