Practice Management
During 2017–2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified a total of 50 large tuberculosis (TB) outbreaks in 23 states, according to a new Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC defines a large outbreak as 10 or more related cases within a 3-year period and notes that the large outbreaks accounted for 1,092 of the 61,993 cases reported during the study period. Cases attributed to large outbreaks were somewhat different from TB cases …
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Urgent Message: Patients may present with needs surrounding tuberculosis (TB) screening, testing, and treatment to urgent care centers. There is considerable nuance in the approach to these scenarios with consequences for both patient and public health. Urgent care centers should develop clear guidelines for ensuring clinicians select the appropriate TB test for each patient and interpret the results accurately. Erin Loo, PA-C; Lindsey E. Fish, MD Citation: Loo E, Fish LE. Clinical Review of Current …
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While some health officials initially distinguished an emerging tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in Kansas City as the largest documented TB outbreak on record in the United States, a report from the Associated Press indicates that it’s likely not the largest. A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the news outlet that there are at least 2 other larger TB outbreaks recorded. According to data from the Kansas Department of Health and …
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After a decades-long slog toward elimination of tuberculosis in the United States, 2015 saw a slight increase in the number of domestic TB cases. While around half of all reported cases occurred in Texas, California, Florida, and New York, 29 states and the District of Columbia reported increases over 2014. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that lower funding of TB prevention programs may be on reason, urgent care clinicians faced with …
Read MoreUrgent message: Patients who present after exposure to tuberculosis test the clinician’s ability to assimilate broad and generalized information, including a unique set of historical, clinical, and laboratory data required to customize appropriate, patient-specific assessment and treatment plans. By Jacqualine Dancy, PA-C, MPAS Not long after I contributed the article Tuberculosis Screening in Urgent Care Medicine (JUCM, July/August 2010), our urgent care clinic was faced with the exposure to tuberculosis of numerous employees at a …
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Urgent message: Often placed in the role of first-line clinicians with respect to testing for and treating infectious disease, urgent care practitioners are ideally suited to provide screening services for tuberculosis. Introduction In addition to urgent care services, many of us also offer occupational medicine and provide post-offer/pre-employment evaluations. As such, urgent care clinicians play a key role in screening for tuberculosis (TB). In fact, understanding the complexity of the screening process is essential to …
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