Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Mandated Paid Sick Leave, FMLA, and the Complex Landscape of Absence Management

Urgent Message: To protect clinic continuity and avoid financial liabilities, urgent care operators must master the complex, overlapping patchwork of federal and state employee-leave laws to navigate paid-time-off traps, callouts, and defensible terminations. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Keywords: Family and Medical Leave Act; paid sick leave; paid time off; employee absence management; Americans with Disabilities Act; attendance policy The regulatory environment governing employee absence in the United States is a complex, overlapping patchwork of …

An Infant with Neuroblastoma Presenting as Intermittent Eye Bruising: A Pediatric Case Report

Urgent Message: Recurrent or unexplained periorbital ecchymosis (“raccoon eyes”) in an infant should prompt consideration of metastatic neuroblastoma and escalation for appropriate imaging. Alejandro Lopez, BS; Julia Gamache, BS; Ella Weiss, BS; Aaron J. Maki, MD, PhD Keywords: neuroblastoma; metastatic neuroblastoma; periorbital ecchymosis; orbital metastasis; suprarenal mass; pediatric malignancy Abstract Introduction: The presenting symptoms of pediatric neuroblastoma are highly variable. Patients may first present to urgent care for what they perceive as a minor complaint. …

Peripheral Neuropathy Induced by Nitrous Oxide Misuse: A Case Report

Urgent Message: Nitrous oxide-associated peripheral neuropathy may present similarly to Guillain-Barré syndrome, and clinicians are encouraged to conduct a careful clinical assessment of patients with neurological symptoms. Ivan Koay, MBChB, MRCS, FCUCM, FRNZCUC, MD; Cameron Olphert, BSc (Hons), MSc Keywords: nitrous oxide toxicity; vitamin B12 deficiency; peripheral neuropathy; myeloneuropathy; Guillain-Barré syndrome; paresthesia Abstract Introduction: Although often regarded as “safe,” repeated exposure to nitrous oxide can result in serious neurological sequelae, most notably functional vitamin B12 …

Abstracts in Urgent Care – September 2026

Web-Based Pediatric Point-of-Care Ultrasound Cases Take Home Point: Implementation of a web-based point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) educational intervention resulted in improved learning outcomes and favorable participant evaluations among clinicians working in resource-limited settings. Citation: Ricci A, Lindsay D, Schwanfelder C, et al. Web-Based Deliberate Practice of Pediatric Point-of-Care Ultrasound Cases in Resource-Limited Settings: A Multicenter Implementation and Effectiveness Study. J Ultrasound Med. 2025;44(7):1231-1244. doi:10.1002/jum.16679 Relevance: POCUS is an increasingly valuable tool in clinical practice, providing rapid …

Retail Clinics Shrink By 33%

RETAIL CLINIC ROOFTOPS BY HOST Between May 2023 and June 2026, the number of health clinics hosted in retail settings in the United States fell from 1,750 to 1,166. This represents a 33% overall decline from the 2023 peak. The decline also includes a recent 15% drop since our previous analysis, which found 1,370 sites in operation from May 2023 through December 2024.1 The contraction began when CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart announced closures and has …

83-Year-Old Female With Palpitations

An 83-year-old female with a past medical history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and hyperlipidemia presents to urgent care with palpitations and dizziness for the past 2 weeks. She does not have any family members present. An ECG is obtained. View the ECG and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the next page.

Urgent Care Beats Primary Care On Speed of Service

A survey of 1,014 U.S. healthcare consumers suggests that speed remains urgent care’s strongest competitive advantage, and it’s also the factor consumers value most, according to data from branding firm Monigle. Urgent care outperformed primary care on consumers’ perception of “help you get care quickly” (71% vs 68%), but primary care scored better on all the other measures included in the survey. The largest gaps between urgent care and primary care appeared in the ability …

Pediatric Vaccine Hesitancy in Families Seeking Care in Urgent Care Centers

Urgent Message: Despite national recommendations regarding childhood vaccination, some parents are hesitant or refuse to vaccinate their child. This survey assessment presents parents’ perceptions of vaccination and the scope of undervaccination in a pediatric urgent care population. Stacy B. Buchanan, DNP, APRN, CPNP-PC; Brooke Cherven, PhD, MPH, RN; Betsy Dye, MS, CPNP-PC, NPD-BC, EBP-C; Temima Oratz, BSN, RN, EBP-C; Margaret Gettis, DNP, APRN, CPNP-PC, EBP-C Keywords: vaccine hesitancy; childhood immunization; undervaccination; measles-mumps-rubella vaccine; varicella vaccine; …

Clinicians Rewrite Vast Majority of AI-Drafted Portal Messages

Researchers from Dartmouth found that when using large language models (LLMs) to draft responses to patient portal messages, clinicians may spend more time editing the AI responses than it would take to write them manually in the first place. Using more than 610,000 patient portal messages, the researchers created a training dataset of 144,000 clinician–patient conversations and tested multiple commercial and locally hosted LLMs against expert-written responses. In the study —which was presented at the …

We Must Meet Our Patients Where They Are

Lindsey E. Fish, MD, FCUCM, Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, [email protected] In this issue of JUCM, you will find an original research article exploring parental vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy is a challenging issue because it frequently triggers charged emotions in patients and clinicians alike. While there have always been strong opinions regarding vaccines, from the clinician perspective, the degree amplified significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. I will never forget reading about front-line physicians …

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