Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Chatbots Practicing Medicine Poorly

In a study of large language models (LLMs) published in Nature Medicine, researchers found chatbots provide inaccurate and inconsistent information to people seeking medical advice, which could pose health risks. What’s more, consumers did not make better health decisions than those who used traditional sources for their information such as internet searches. The randomized trial asked 1,298 participants to identify recommended actions for 10 medical scenarios (eg, developing a severe headache after a night out, …

Rising Worker Activity Reflects Tough Labor Market

At least 4 urgent care centers in Colorado were closed on the same day last week because of a walkout among employees—who were not represented by a union—disrupting business operations and unexpectedly leaving patients in the community with fewer choices for accessing care. Local news outlets reported employee complaints about wages. There’s no doubt labor activity in general has accelerated across the country, and urgent care leaders should be paying attention, according to Alan A. …

Rapid Tests for RSV Reduce Unnecessary Antibiotic Prescribing

A retrospective cohort study of 256 children aged 9–36 months found rapid antigen testing for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) reduced unnecessary antibiotic prescribing in primary care, as published in JAMA Network Open. Among tested children, 30.86% were RSV positive. Antibiotic prescribing was substantially lower when RSV was detected: 20.25% of RSV-positive cases received antibiotics compared with 39.55% of RSV-negative cases. The prescription rate was 0.18 vs 0.29 per 10 person-days, corresponding to about a 48% …

Vape Devices Implicated In More Nicotine Exposures Among Kids

There were 92,973 nicotine exposures in children aged 1 month to 5 years from 2016 through 2023, according to a national analysis of U.S. poison center reports published in JAMA Network Open. Trends over time indicate nicotine exposures from e-cigarette are rising as vaping devices are growing in popularity. Researchers found 2 pediatric deaths associated with e-cigarette liquid ingestion, and most exposure cases occurred in toddlers (median age 1.25 years). Exposures involving traditional tobacco products …

New Amazon AI Tools Sum Up Information, Handle Scheduling

Amazon Web Services has introduced Amazon Connect Health, a collection of artificial intelligence tools, including features that help clinicians sort out clinical information from patient histories. Amazon reasons that clinicians and staff spend too much time cobbling together information, and the new agentic AI tools can take on that task instead. Already in service at UC San Diego, the AI suite is verifying patients’ identities; handling appointment scheduling in real time; creating summaries of medical …

Older Adults Willing To Drive An Hour For Care

A national survey of 2,650 U.S. adults aged 65 years and older examined how far patients are willing to travel for routine medical care before delaying or skipping appointments, as published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers found the median acceptable travel times were about 68 minutes for primary care, 128 minutes for specialty care, and 113 minutes for diagnostic visits. Higher income, higher education, and the ability to drive oneself were associated with greater willingness …

Testing And Treating STIs Leads To Progress

Analysis of U.S. surveillance data found that HIV coinfection occurs in about 1 in 12 adolescents diagnosed with early syphilis, though the proportion has declined in recent years. Among 28,965 adolescents ages 15 to 19 with primary, secondary, or early latent syphilis from 2014–2023, 9% also had HIV, as reported in MedPage Today reporting on the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. Additionally, 27% of the adolescents had unknown HIV status. In terms of trends, …

How Should Regulators Structure New AI Rules?

The American Hospital Association (AHA) and healthcare solution providers are chiming in on how they want federal regulators to structure their oversight of artificial intelligence and its integration into clinical care. For example, AHA suggested that regulations should rely on existing rules to smooth the path to innovation while also preempting state laws. It also wants to see AI companies required to meet compliance standards for privacy and security as HIPAA-covered entities. Additionally, AHA emphasizes …

RSV and Flu Tied to Severe Pediatric Respiratory Illness

In a cohort study of 516 children with viral respiratory infections who were hospitalized, researchers found 34 (6.6%) developed severe disease—defined as a clinical severity score greater than 3 (on a scale of 1-6), as published in JAMA Network Open. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza were strongly associated with worse outcomes. In multivariable analysis, RSV diagnosis (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 4.26; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.80–10.10) and influenza diagnosis (AOR, 4.13; 95% CI, 1.88–9.04) …

How To Improve Pediatric Hypertension Detection

Pediatric hypertension affects approximately 3-5% of children, yet fewer than 25% of cases are diagnosed and more than 60% do not receive recommended follow-up. In a study presented in JAMA Network Open including 25 clinicians across 10 pediatric primary care clinics, researchers in Delaware and Pennsylvania identified 5 major barriers that could affect the detection of kids’ hypertension. In semistructured qualitative interviews, clinicians cited the absence of standardized clinical pathways (endorsed by 80%), inconsistent training …

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