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Weekly emergency department (ED) visits for tick bites have reached their highest April levels since 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—reaching 104 per 100,000 ED visits. Last year, just 14 states accounted for ~90% of U.S. Lyme disease cases, according to Harvard Health, and the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest are the regions of highest risk. Even so, the reported data doesn’t capture urgent care’s role in treating tick bites and Lyme disease. Urgent care can provide appropriate care for tick-bite assessment, erythema migrans identification, and prophylaxis. For high-risk Ixodes scapularis bites, the Infectious Diseases Society of America recommends a single dose of doxycycline 200 mg within 72 hours of attachment for adults, which is within the scope of services for most urgent cares. Last year, an exclusive analysis of more than 35 million urgent care patient visits in the Experity EMR found Vermont, Maine, and West Virginia experienced the highest number of urgent care visits related to Lyme disease.
Go-to setting of care: “Urgent care is uniquely positioned to manage the overwhelming majority of tick bite and related concerns quickly, appropriately, and without adding unnecessary strain to already crowded hospital emergency departments,” says Jonathan S. Halpert MD FACEP, CEO, Priority 1 Urgent Care in New York “In high-incidence regions like the Northeast, patients benefit from timely access to clinicians familiar with tick identification, tick-borne-illness risk assessment, prophylactic versus active treatment criteria, and early recognition of primary Lyme disease versus other similarly presenting but non-tick-bite-related conditions. As seasonal tick exposure drives increasing numbers of patients seeking on-demand care for urgent but nonemergency conditions, urgent care medicine remains the primary access point for patients seeking evaluation and treatment of problems such as those that are regularly seen related to insect and tick bites.”
Read More
- You Can’t Afford to Miss the Signs of Tick-Borne Disease—and You May Be Seeing a Lot of It
- Visits For Tick Bites Rising Earlier Than Expected