Practice Management
Click Here to download the article PDF Urgent message: In the event that you are taken to court over care that is alleged to have been insufficient, negligent, or otherwise poor, your own documentation at the time care is provided can be your saving grace or your undoing. William Sullivan, DO, JD INTRODUCTION Providing proper medical care in urgent care centers is only half of the battle. As the medical record grows in prominence in …
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Click Here to download the article PDF Urgent message: Headache is most often a benign complaint among patients presenting to urgent care. Vigilance for risk factors and appropriate use of validated screening criteria are essential to uncovering potentially life-threatening etiologies. Paul Hansen, MD Citation: Hansen P. More than a simple headache: using the SNNO-OP10 criteria to screen for life-threatening headache presentations. J Urgent Care Med. 2023;17(9):18-21 ABSTRACT Introduction: Headache is most commonly a benign complaint …
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Click Here to download the article PDF Ivan Koay MBChB, MRCS, FRNZCUC, MD Immersive Virtual Reality Use in Reducing Pediatric Procedural Anxiety Take-home point: Immersive virtual reality (IVR) use in pediatric patients significantly improved pain and anxiety compared with the control group. Citation: Wong C, Choi K. Effects of an immersive virtual reality intervention on pain and anxiety among pediatric patients undergoing venipuncture: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(2):e230001. Relevance: Poorly managed procedural …
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A 62-year-old woman presents with a rash that appeared simultaneously with the onset of ipsilateral facial palsy. She reports severe ear pain in the affected ear, along with hearing loss. Physical examination reveals grouped bullae and vesicles on an erythematous base ipsilaterally involving the auricle, external ear canal, and tympanic membrane, as well as the mouth and anterior two-thirds of the tongue. View the image taken and consider what your diagnosis would be.
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Click Here to download the PDF of The Best Time to Plant a Tree. Urgent Care is definitely ready to start Driving Change again. The pandemic taught us how to be in crisis-response mode all day every day, to roll with wave after wave after wave of external changes, to constantly pivot and adapt, to maintain a furious pace because our communities needed us to. It also diminished opportunities to improve other skills—longer-term thinking, broader-scope …
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Click Here to the download PDF. With expiration of the national Public Health Emergency (PHE) as of May 11, the revenue cycle management (RCM) industry has to adjust to the “new normal.” Some emergency declarations were tied to the end of the PHE and others are not. While not a comprehensive list, I’ve outlined some of the most urgent care-relevant changes below. Payers Coverage for COVID-19 Testing, Treatments, and Vaccines During the PHE, federally regulated …
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Click Here to download the PDF. Urgent message: In December 2022, Congress passed the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act (W-Waiver), which would remove federal patient caps and allow any healthcare provider with a standard DEA controlled-medication license to prescribe buprenorphine. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Senior Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine and President of Experity Consulting. For over a decade, the question of whether or not to prescribe buprenorphine/naloxone (Suboxone) products in urgent …
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Click Here to download the PDF. Urgent message: Lacerations are a common reason for patients to present to urgent care. Data suggest not all providers are comfortable managing lacerations, however. Clinicians who need additional training should be afforded such in order to reduce acuity degradation and unnecessary referrals to the emergency room. David T. Ford, MD; Patrick M. O’Malley, MD; and Brantley Dick, MD Citation: Ford DT, O’Malley PM, Dick B. Assessing Urgent Care Clinics’ …
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Click Here to download the PDF. Figure 1: Initial ECG (Case presented by Benjamin Cooper, MD, MEd, FACEP, Department of Emergency Medicine, McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.)
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Click Here to download the PDF. A 46-year-old female presents with an evolving eruption that developed on her right hand and spread to her forearm over the past several weeks. She is an immunocompetent commercial landscaper who lives in Brazil, and she does not recall any specific injury. She is regularly exposed to toxic plants and sustains minor scratches and cuts at work. She also suspects that she could have experienced bug bites. She appears …
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