The Last Hour Problem

The Last Hour Problem

It’s 8 pm and I’m 9 hours into a 10-hour shift when four new patients walk in. Even though I’m feeling drained, I smile warmly as each passes my workstation. I “eyeball” them each as they walk by; my grin persists because they all seem stable and my “TUR” for this shift in the emergency department is now only 45 minutes away. TUR (or “time until relief”) is a metric I continuously track with ruthless …

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More Timely Care: Effect of Online Queuing vs Change in Hours of Operation on Hourly Arrival Volumes. A Practice Management Reflection

More Timely Care: Effect of Online Queuing vs Change in Hours of Operation on Hourly Arrival Volumes. A Practice Management Reflection

Urgent message: Hours of operation changes may have more effect on leveling patient arrival volumes in a pediatric urgent care compared with an online queueing system alone. Aimy Patel, MD; Jennifer Johnson, MD; Brian R. Lee, PhD, MPH; Amanda Montalbano, MD, MPH Citation: Patel A, Johnson J, Lee BR, Montalbano A. More timely care: effect of online queuing vs change in hours of operation on hourly arrival volumes. a practice management reflection. J Urgent Care …

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Open for Debate: Minimum Operating Hours for Urgent Care

Open for Debate: Minimum Operating Hours for Urgent Care

URGENT MESSAGE: Urgent care’s value proposition is “access,” which includes walk-in availability whenever patients have a medical need. However, could using some minimum operating hours as a defining feature of “urgent care” unintentionally restrict access for tens of millions of Americans living in historically underserved communities with population density insufficient to support opening seven days per week and 3,000 hours per year? Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of JUCM—The Journal of …

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