Practice Management
One side will say it’s a restoration of freedom of speech for doctors concerned about a legitimate public health issue. The other will say it’s a step down the slippery slope toward unfair restrictions on the right to bear arms. Either way, a federal appeals court says physicians in Florida are free to ask patients if they own a gun whether the question is medically relevant at the time or not. The decision effectively overturns …
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The next decade will see national health expenditures grow 5.6% annually, according to projections from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), ensuring that the need for cost-effective, high-quality care will continue to grow as well. If CMS’s Office of the Actuary is correct in its estimate, the jump in healthcare spending will outpace projected growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 1.2%. The portion of the GDP consumed by healthcare spending is …
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Urgent Message: Blogging is a relatively simple, inexpensive, and completely customized marketing tool too often underutilized by urgent care operators. Employed correctly, however, it can help search engines deliver potential patients to your website at any time of day or night. These days, it doesn’t matter if a patient is trying to find a nearby urgent care facility or research a medical condition to determine if they need medical attention. They won’t be looking in …
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Patients visiting Lanier Urgent Care in Gainesville, GA are asked the usual questions upon arrival—plus one that’s very atypical: You wanna see the dogs? According to the centers practice administrator, 90% of patients answer “Yes!” to that question. Lanier has a pair of canines on site every day, though one of them will likely be departing to spend time in Lanier’s soon-to-open second location. Dr. Ronald Perry, president of Lanier, says the dogs have a …
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Urgent message: Travel medicine is a service addition that enables urgent care operators to attract more patients and increase revenue from existing patients while leveraging existing infrastructure and personnel. When an urgent care center’s patient revenues exceed operating expenses, the operation is said to have achieved break-even profitability—at which point each incremental patient visit contributes directly to the bottom line. Nevertheless, in the face of rising fixed costs and falling payer reimbursements, many centers still …
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GoHealth Urgent Care is going to open 15 new urgent care centers cobranded with Hartford HealthCare over the next 18 months. Hartford says it will benefit by bringing in a greater number of patients, by virtue of having more access points. GoHealth will have the benefit of technology standards like “smart glass” procedure rooms, mobile x-ray equipment, and a broader, unified electronic health records system. The partnership will also increase GoHealth’s visibility in central and …
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Recognizing the wisdom of offering patients a wider variety of options than primary care or the emergency room, more hospital systems are extending their brands to urgent care by entering into joint ventures with urgent care operators, or creating new urgent care centers of their own. The media are taking notice, too; a new article in Modern Healthcare details the investments MultiCare Health System, based in Tacoma, WA and Northwell Health of New Hyde Park, …
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Offering annual “memberships” to your urgent care center can be a good move to build customer loyalty, but also to encourage patients to seek care then they need it. FastMed Urgent Care, for one, has a program wherein patients pay $35 a year to receive a $35 discount for each subsequent self-pay visit. The plan also covers spouses and children under 18 who live in the same household and provides a prescription discount card where …
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Jennifer Ilgauskas saw how much her husband—former Cleveland Cavaliers center Zydrunas Ilgauskas—relied on doctors and physical therapists to overcome injuries as quickly and safely as possible in his playing days. Now she says that inspired her to put her Master’s degree in public health to use by opening an urgent care center with a physician partner. That operation has been going so well that the duo just opened a second urgent care business, Lakewood Urgent …
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Urgent care centers are distinct from emergency rooms by virtue of the amount of time patients can expect to wait, cost, and the acuity of care offered. A federal court in Rhode Island determined that, at least in one case, they can be held to the same requirements of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) as hospital emergency departments, though. Friedrich, et al v South County Hospital Healthcare System, et al centered …
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