Practice Management
Today, SouthStar Urgent Care has 11 clinics in relatively small markets in Louisiana. By year’s end, they expect to have 19; come 2020, they’re adding another 18, tripling their location count in the space of a few months. SouthStar’s new president and chief operating officer says the sudden, dramatic growth is a sign of the company’s commitment to Louisiana and its passion for supporting communities. While that may be, urgent care watchers also recognize it …
Read More
A woman presented to an urgent care center in Santa Fe, NM to have pain and bruising in her chest checked out after she took a fall. X-rays showed now evidence of fractures or contusion, so the woman was given a prescription for pain medication and released, with no instructions for follow-up care. Return trips to the same urgent care center followed suit. Months later, after visiting another healthcare provider, she was diagnosed with lung …
Read More
Urgent message: Patients presenting to the urgent care center with split earlobe injuries can have their defect repaired with good cosmetic results. This minor office-based procedure can be easily performed in this venue by the urgent care provider. Oscar D. Almeida, Jr., MD, FACOG, FACS Dating back to the 2nd Century in the Roman Empire, earrings have remained a staple of human fashion. Today, the popular use of earrings has become gender neutral. The expanded …
Read More
State support for reimbursing telemedicine providers is growing at a fast and furious pace—as is consumer adoption of telemedicine services. According to the American Telemedicine Association’s 2019 State of the States Report: Coverage and Reimbursement, 40 states and the District of Columbia have adopted substantive policies or received awards to expand telehealth coverage and reimbursement—just since 2017. In doing so, they’re also increasing access for patients and incentivizing providers (including urgent care operators) to jump …
Read More
A new report from UnitedHealth Group reveals that around two-thirds of the 27 million annual visits to U.S. emergency rooms are unnecessary. Those 18 million encounters carry an average cost of $2,032 each, adding up to a $36 billion price tag for care that could be provided more easily and just as safely elsewhere for a fraction of the cost. The same brief notes the average cost of a trip to an urgent care center …
Read More
It’s only August, but some regions of the country have already had their back-to-school days. Others are just now seeing advertisements for blockbuster sales of school supplies. For some families, though, those promotions serve as a painful reminder that new supplies are out of reach for their children. Dayton (NV) Urgent Care has taken notice of this and is trying to ease the load by collecting community donations of backpacks and school supplies appropriate for …
Read More
A study just published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine highlights the growing trend of patients flocking to urgent care centers, and having a positive experience once they get there. The research considers more than 84,500 urgent care center reviews and over 16,400 emergency department reviews on Yelp. In general, the authors note, patients give higher ratings to urgent care; around 60% of the urgent care reviews were four stars or more, while around the …
Read More
The Urgent Care Association and the College of Urgent Care Medicine have launched a new initiative to formally acknowledge urgent care operators who demonstrate compliance with the Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Antibiotic Stewardship Commendation program is intended to encourage urgent care centers to become more proactive in their antibiotic stewardship efforts. Using evidence-based recommendations for diagnosis and management, participating urgent care operators can design …
Read More
Despite countless urgent care centers devoting lots of time, signage, and promotional messages to helping patients understand when they can go to an urgent care center or really do need to go to the emergency room, confusion prevails for too many. They go to the ED with a common earache or after they’ve stepped in a ditch and sprained their ankle. Or they go to an urgent care center with chest pain when there’s an …
Read More
Lou Ellen Horwitz, MA Finally, after months of looking for the right health system partner, you have a deal to purchase your clinics. Congratulations! There are many positives in your decision to partner to achieve your vision. And get ready. The next year or so, for yourself and your leadership team, will be extremely exciting, sometimes frustrating, and often a bit terrifying. To help you prepare, we offer some tips for surviving before, during, and …
Read More