Practice Management
Lumbar belts appear to be helpful for alleviating low back pain, possibly offering a reasonable alternative to pain medication. In an analysis published in JAMA Network Open of 168 adults with nonspecific low back pain lasting 1–6 months, researchers evaluated whether adding a nonrigid lumbar belt to usual care improved pain and function. Patients assigned to the belt were instructed to wear it 4–8 hours daily for 12 weeks. At 12 weeks, disability scores improved …
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Waiting for test results can be a nerve-wracking experience for patients, and many are accessing results in a portal before their clinician even gets a look. In a nationally representative survey of 4,982 U.S. adults, 68.6% of respondents said they viewed their test results through a patient portal before hearing from their healthcare practitioner. Among those who viewed results first, 6.6% reported poor understanding of what the results showed and what they meant for their …
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Antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) in urgent care settings appear to produce practice improvement, according to a new systematic review published in Cureus. Researchers evaluated literature reporting on ASPs specifically in urgent care settings and found that 11 of 12 completed studies demonstrated reduced antimicrobial prescribing or improved appropriateness in prescribing patterns among clinicians. Education and guideline-based strategies produced some of the largest improvements. For example, an intervention that used clinical pathway pocket-card algorithms to guide …
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A prospective multicenter study that compared physical examination findings in children with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) found that 2 clinicians examining the same patient may not always agree on whether certain physical findings are or are not present during an exam. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, included 252 patients aged 3 months–17 years with CAP evaluated at 7 pediatric emergency departments. Two clinicians independently examined each patient within 60 minutes. After the exam findings …
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Researchers examining electronic health record data found nirsevimab administration was associated with reduced antibiotic prescribing among infants during their first respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) season, as published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Among 15,341 eligible infants from 32 pediatric practices in the study, 7,413 (48.3%) received nirsevimab. At 6 months, nirsevimab was associated with a 14.4% reduction in antibiotic prescribing for outpatient acute respiratory tract infections and a 40.3% reduction for outpatient bronchiolitis. Antibiotic prescribing associated …
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Researchers found that women with urinary tract infection (UTI), those with noninfectious lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), and control subjects exhibited similar uropathogen levels when evaluated with quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) testing, as published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. They analyzed urine from 502 women: 104 with recurrent UTI and acute symptoms; 354 with noninfectious LUTS; and 44 asymptomatic controls. The qPCR tests detected bacterial DNA in nearly all participants, including E coli in 97.3%, …
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For patients with limited English proficiency (LEP), a healthcare visit can be somewhat frustrating for them and for their clinician. That’s why several federal laws require certain healthcare entities to offer interpreter services. A survey of 230 primary care physicians recently published in JAMA Network Open revealed that only 50.4% of respondents regularly used at least 1 type of professional medical interpreter, while 53.0% regularly relied on ad hoc interpreters, such as family members or …
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The 2024–2025 influenza season was characterized as having high severity, and in research published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, researchers found flu shots provided protection not just against hospitalization but also against emergency department (ED) and urgent care (UC) visits during that time. They evaluated influenza vaccine effectiveness using data from 7 healthcare systems in 8 states across 102,854 ED/urgent care visits among children and 233,411 visits among adults. Overall, vaccination was 54% effective against …
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The College of Urgent Care Medicine’s (CUCM) Clinical Response Committee recently collaborated with representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to discuss Ebola preparedness. Even though no cases of Ebola have been confirmed in the United States, CDC is responsible for advanced public health preparation and mitigation strategies should any Ebola cases be identified. According to CUCM, the discussion between the federal agency and College’s committee is significant because it underscores the …
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The nonprofit PatientRightsAdvocate.org (PRA) has filed a lawsuit against the American Medical Association (AMA) seeking to make Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes available to the public and health organizations free of charge, according to an announcement. Federal law requires healthcare entities to use CPT for Medicare claims, and most payer policies—including among state Medicaid programs—use CPT codes for billing as well. AMA has held the copyright for CPT since 1966, and it charges organizations for …
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