Urgent Care Archives - Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

The Best Time to Plant a Tree

Click Here to download the PDF. Urgent Care is definitely ready to start Driving Change again. The pandemic taught us how to be in crisis-response mode all day every day, to roll with wave after wave after wave of external changes, to constantly pivot and adapt, to maintain a furious pace because our communities needed us to. It also diminished opportunities to improve other skills—longer-term thinking, broader-scope planning, finer-tuning on quality improvement, better team development, …

End of the Public Health Emergency: What’s Next?

Click Here to the download PDF. With expiration of the national Public Health Emergency (PHE) as of May 11, the revenue cycle management (RCM) industry has to adjust to the “new normal.” Some emergency declarations were tied to the end of the PHE and others are not. While not a comprehensive list, I’ve outlined some of the most urgent care-relevant changes below. Payers Coverage for COVID-19 Testing, Treatments, and Vaccines During the PHE, federally regulated …

The X-Waiver Is No More: What This Means for Urgent Care

Click Here to download the PDF. Urgent message: In December 2022, Congress passed the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act (W-Waiver), which would remove federal patient caps and allow any healthcare provider with a standard DEA controlled-medication license to prescribe buprenorphine. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine and President of Experity Consulting. For over a decade, the question of whether or not to prescribe buprenorphine/naloxone (Suboxone) products in urgent …

Assessing Urgent Care Clinics’ Readiness to Manage a Lip Laceration

Click Here to download the PDF. Urgent message: Lacerations are a common reason for patients to present to urgent care. Data suggest not all providers are comfortable managing lacerations, however. Clinicians who need additional training should be afforded such in order to reduce acuity degradation and unnecessary referrals to the emergency room. David T. Ford, MD; Patrick M. O’Malley, MD; and Brantley Dick, MD Citation: Ford DT, O’Malley PM, Dick B. Assessing Urgent Care Clinics’ …

A 69-Year-Old Male with Left-Sided Chest Pain and Dyspnea for 3 Days

Click Here to download the PDF. Figure 1: Initial ECG (Case presented by Benjamin Cooper, MD, MEd, FACEP, Department of Emergency Medicine, McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.)

A 46-Year-Old with Evolving Sores on Her Hand and Arm

Click Here to download the PDF. A 46-year-old female presents with an evolving eruption that developed on her right hand and spread to her forearm over the past several weeks. She is an immunocompetent commercial landscaper who lives in Brazil, and she does not recall any specific injury. She is regularly exposed to toxic plants and sustains minor scratches and cuts at work. She also suspects that she could have experienced bug bites. She appears …

A 40-Year-Old with Swelling After a Direct Blow to the Eye

A 40-year-old male presents with pain and swelling in his right eye after being struck by a foul ball while coaching his daughter’s softball game. View the images taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the next page.

Are Urgent Care Providers Liable if They Don’t Test Patients for COVID?

Click Here to download the PDF. Urgent message: As the severity of newer strains of SARS-CoV-2 has decreased, many patients and providers have become less vigilant about COVID-19. Yet COVID-19 remains among the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. Failure to diagnose and, if eligible, treat patients with COVID-19 may result in significant harm. Professional liability is less likely, however, given the current governmental protections in place. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is …

The 10-Year Trend on UC Claim Lines Is Strong—in the City and in the Country

Click Here to download the PDF. Believe it or not, just a decade ago urgent care accounted for barely 6% of all claim lines in the United States. There was little difference between rural and urban settings, too. New research from FAIR Health1 shows that the picture changed dramatically in 2015, though, as the percentage of claim lines attributed to urgent care jumped nearly 5% in a single year and rural claims started to outpace …

Back Pain, an Urgent Care Visit—and a Devastating Outcome

Click Here to download the PDF Urgent message: By the time an adverse outcome occurs in the urgent care center, it’s too late to go back and ensure the documentation reflects the care the patient received. Lyndsie Pfeifer, DO; Marta Fratczak, Kinkela Harkins, and Michael Weinstock, MD Citation: Pfeifer L, Fratczak M, Harkins K, Weinstock M. Back pain, an urgent care visit—and a devastating outcome. J Urgent Care Med. 2023;17(8):13-17. Key words: back pain, documentation …

« Previous