Practice Management
Urgent message: As the debate rages as to whether today’s healthcare recipient should be regarded as a patient or a consumer, urgent care should consider which of the two mindsets will have the greatest positive impact on its care delivery model. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. The advent of high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) has shifted …
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It’s believed that widespread administration of human papillomavirus vaccine could prevent roughly 33,700 cancers annually. At the same time, there are two irrefutable facts that speak in favor of vaccination: 1) more than 4,000 women die of cervical cancer each year, with HPV associated with almost every case, and 2) less than half of Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 are getting vaccinated. The disconnect isn’t in public awareness, though; it appears that parents …
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We may still be firmly entrenched in summer, but flu season is rearing its ugly head earlier than usual this year. Sporadic cases have popped up from Atlanta to San Diego already. Unfortunately, this coincides with federal health officials revealing there will be a shorter time frame in which people need to get their flu vaccine this year. The Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization put off deciding on the “final” formulation …
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E-cigarettes and vaping were promoted by their marketers from the get-go as a safer alternative to traditional tobacco-packed cigarettes. Some companies have suggested their product can be helpful in helping people quit their dangerous addiction. It’s enough to remind one of the mid-20th Century, when licensed physicians were hired to assure American smokers that one brand was “safer” than another. We all know how that turned out. Now, over the past 2 months alone, respiratory …
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Despite the best efforts of many clinicians—including urgent care providers—to reduce incidence of opioid addiction and the death and shattered lives that follow in its wake, federal official are taking the unprecedented step of asking providers to screen every adult they see for illegal drug use. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says there is simply not enough being done by the very people who write prescriptions for potentially addictive drugs. So, they’re asking all …
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ChoiceOne Urgent Care in Forest Hill, MD is taking a back-to-school community donation program to the next level by hosting a party that will bring generous neighbors together to benefit others—while at the same time getting to know ChoiceOne staff and checking out the facility. ChoiceOne and its partner, University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health, enlisted local media to invite the public to a Back to School Bash, to which they were encouraged to bring donated …
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Visits that disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly made to urgent care centers and other healthcare facilities are making headlines as authorities work to prove 18 federal charges against him, ranging from kidnapping to sexual assault to producing and possessing child pornography. The latest bombshell in the years-long investigation is that Kelly may have exposed his victims to sexually transmitted diseases in the course of his alleged assaults. To that end, investigators have obtained records from …
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The patient is a 19-year-old male who reported experiencing sudden intense ankle pain after getting his skates tangled on the ice while playing hockey. View the images taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be.
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If you needed any more proof that we as a society—including the urgent care industry—are firmly entrenched in the internet age, here it is: A prestigious academic health system has appointed its first chief medical social media officer. As noted in an article recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Harvard-trained gastroenterologist Austin Chiang, MD is now tasked with helping Jefferson Health/Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia stay on point with a …
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At the midway point of August, designated as Vaccine Awareness Month by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and just weeks before the start of 2019–2020 flu shot efforts, there’s a renewed push to help clinicians deal with patients who are convinced they “know” that vaccines a) are a conspiracy to make drug companies and doctors rich; b) cause patients to get the illness they’re being vaccinated against; and c) probably cause autism in innocent children. …
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