Practice Management
By Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc — President of Urgent Care Consultants; Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine The 2026 Urgent Care Association Convention convened in Chicago this April under the theme “Amplify” — and across roughly fifty clinical and practice management sessions, that word kept landing on the same point: amplify the clinician, don’t replace them. Artificial intelligence, the tonal undercurrent of nearly every track, was framed less as an autonomous …
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The gas-station convenience store operator QuikTrip Corp. has sold off its 9 MedWise urgent care centers, according to Convenience Store News, effectively exiting the healthcare market. The Saint Francis Health System in Oklahoma has acquired the MedWise centers and will operate them within the health system’s network starting in June, retaining the current staff. While the centers earned Urgent Care Association (UCA) accreditation, growth stalled due to the lack of a hospital network and little …
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Physician burnout rates are declining nationwide, but overall, burnout is still a serious issue, according to the American Medical Association (AMA). The association’s data shows in 2025, 41.9% of physicians reported experiencing at least 1 symptom of burnout—which is an improvement from the 43.2% reporting burnout in 2024 and 48.2% in 2023. By specialty, the highest rates were reported in emergency medicine (49.8%), urological surgery (49.5%), hematology/oncology (49.3%), obstetrics and gynecology (45.7%), radiology (45.2%), and …
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JUCM Editor in Chief Lindsey E. Fish, MD, FCUCM, is now leading the College of Urgent Care Medicine (CUCM) and the Urgent Care College of Physicians (UCCOP) as the newly elected president. Members of the CUCM and UCCOP board of directors elected Fish during the 2026 Urgent Care Association (UCA) Conference in Chicago last week. CUCM and UCCOP, as affiliates of UCA, drive timely advances in clinical care, education, research, collaboration, and advocacy for urgent …
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In a large observational study of 521,244 adults with acute sinusitis published in JAMA, researchers found outcomes were similar between patients treated with standard-dose amoxicillin-clavulanate and those treated with standard-dose amoxicillin. The study compared outpatient outcomes from 2018 through 2023 for new users of amoxicillin-clavulanate (875–125 mg, 2 times daily) or amoxicillin (875 mg twice daily or 500 mg, 3 times daily). Treatment failure was low overall (3.1%) and did not differ between groups. Only …
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Emergency department (ED) visits for tick bites are surging nationwide, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of April 19, 2026, CDC recorded 85 per 100,000 ED visits were due to tick bites—more than double what is typically expected at this time of year. In Maryland, ExpressCare Urgent Care Centers are seeing an uptick in bites with 160 cases so far that were ultimately treated for Lyme disease, according …
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In a 25-year retrospective study of pediatric coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever) at the University of California Los Angeles, researchers found a rise in the number of cases and in the severity of cases, with numbers surging in the past 3 years. Patients were classified to have either: primary coccidioidomycosis, which were patients that were asymptomatic or had localized pulmonary infection; or disseminated coccidioidomycosis, which were patients with a site of extra-pulmonary disease. Among the 81 patient …
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Recent data from the National Health Interview Survey shows 90.3% of U.S. adults report having a usual source of care. Most rely on traditional sites, and 77.5% use a physician’s office or health center. Of note, 8.6% identify urgent care or retail clinics as their go-to healthcare setting, with similar rates among men and women. That means as many as 22 million U.S. adults may be using urgent care as their usual source of care. …
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As markets evolve, urgent care operators often look for unique opportunities to add services that complement care or fill gaps where they exist. In Marquette, Michigan, after a Planned Parenthood clinic shut down, an urgent care operated by a physician entrepreneur has now started offering medication abortion services, according to a report from NPR and KFF Health News. Services are provided by emergency medicine physicians, and 1 of the physicians previously worked at Planned Parenthood. …
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A cross-sectional survey of 74 urgent care and emergency physicians working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, found adherence to evidence-based ankle sprain guidelines was inconsistent despite high reported awareness of the guidelines, as published in Cureus. While 95.9% of physicians were familiar with the Ottawa Ankle Rules (OAR) that predict the need for radiographs for ankle injuries—and 70.3% reported using them—only 36.5% applied them consistently. Additionally, researchers found just 56.8% of physicians correctly identified the key …
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