Ashley Blachford, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Friday Night Lights Lead to Urgent Care

Intermountain’s Saltzer Health expanded its services this month to include an orthopedic clinic open on Friday nights, specifically designed to care for injured athletes. The service is available at its 24-hour urgent care location known as Ten Mile in Meridian, Idaho, every Friday from 8 to 11 PM. How patients benefit: With the back-to-school season, every community is teeming with young athletes participating in Friday night sporting events. Rather than accessing the emergency department and …

Cold Air For Croup Isn’t an Old Wives’ Tale

Results from a randomized controlled trial presented in Pediatrics indicates that exposing children with laryngotracheobronchitis/acute viral laryngotracheitis to cold, outdoor air (<10°C or <50°F) can be beneficial in reducing symptoms when used as an adjunct to oral dexamethasone. Children in the trial were aged 3 months to 10 years and were seen in a tertiary pediatric emergency department, where they received a single dose of 0.6 mg/kg oral dexamethasone. The group of patients who were …

Supine Blood Pressure Reading Has Advantages

Preliminary research presented by the American Heart Association at its hypertension scientific sessions this week in Boston suggests that measuring blood pressure while a person is lying down may be a better predictor of heart health than typical readings when a patient is sitting. Researchers analyzed data from a long-running study and found that supine blood pressure readings were more effective at predicting strokes, serious heart issues, and by comparison. The study’s 11,369 participants were …

As COVID Cases Rise, Home Tests Are Questioned

Urgent care centers across the United States are treating a rising number of COVID-19 cases, even among patients who say they tested negative at home. Nick Karr, MD, CEO and founder of Citra Urgent Care, noted as many as 20% of patients seeking care at the company’s seven locations in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, area, are testing positive, as reported by Fox 4. Texas had a 32% week-over-week increase in cases recently with hospitalizations rising …

More PAs Choose the Urgent Care Setting

Just over 10% of certified physician assistants (PAs) with a specialty in emergency medicine worked in the urgent care practice setting in 2022, according to the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants in its recent statistical profile of PAs. Here’s the good news: While 10% is a small subset of the PA workforce within the emergency medicine category, it’s a significant jump from the 6.6% who reported working in UC settings in the commission’s …

Staff Shortages Inspire Creative Hiring Solutions

Total Access Urgent Care in the St. Louis area has temporarily closed five locations because of staffing shortages, according to Senior Vice President of Clinical Operations Kelly Baynes, as reported by the local Fox News station. Elsewhere in town, 24/7 Urgent Care has also closed two of its locations. Baynes confirmed the Total Access centers will reopen with appropriate staff and told the station the company recently launched an EMT class to attract job seekers to …

Atlanta’s New Drive-Through Urgent Care Is One To Watch

Now open in Atlanta, DriveThru Urgent Care by Viral Solutions promises exactly what its name implies: Patients can receive a selection of care services without leaving their vehicles. According to company officials, Viral Solutions tested nearly 4 million curbside patients for COVID-19 during the pandemic, an activity which laid the groundwork for this drive-through urgent care model, which specializes in testing for and treating seasonal respiratory illnesses. The center is open seven days a week …

Consider Follow-Up Screening for Hypertension Among COVID-19 Patients

A retrospective study of 45,000 patient records presented in Hypertension found an association between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the development of hypertension among adults who had no past history of high blood pressure. It’s unknown if the virus could be triggering the development of hypertension or worsening preexisting hypertension, according to the study’s lead author. But the association is significant. Among the records, 21% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 developed high blood pressure. By comparison, only 16% …

Skewed Pulse Oximeter Readings Delayed Care For Patients With Darker Skin

Research presented in JAMA Network Open found that pulse oximeters more commonly overestimated arterial oxygen saturation for Black and Hispanic patients hospitalized with COVID-19 when compared with White patients. Blood oxygen levels were measured with fingertip pulse oximeters, followed by a blood draw. Researchers found Black patients were nearly 50% more likely than White patients to experience undetected low blood-oxygen saturation. Hispanic patients were 18% more likely to experience an issue. The overestimation was associated …