Practice Management
Ochsner Health System is taking its commitment to providing telehealth in an urgent care environment one step further by launching Ochsner Anywhere Care, a 24-hour, direct-to-consumer telehealth service it will operate in partnership with American Well. Patients will be able to “see” a provider at any time of day or night through an mHealth app on any enabled mobile device when urgent care needs arise. If follow-up care is needed, the online clinician will refer …
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Urgent care operators and occupational medicine providers alike should be aware that prescription opioids continue to be found to blame more often than other substances in overdose deaths in the United States. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s just-released 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment reveals that controlled prescription drugs are the second most commonly abused substance, making the number of deaths slightly out of proportion to the incidence of abuse. The DEA report shows fentanyl and other …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is devoting more resources to gathering and sharing intelligence about acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) as the number of cases continues to rise across the United States. Next up in the CDC’s information campaign will be a Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity (COCA) call next Tuesday, November 13, 2 to 3 pm Eastern. AFM, whose symptoms have been likened to a number of other viruses, including polio, tends to …
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The retail clinic market might not be the only one affected by CVS Health’s union with Aetna. CVS CEO Larry Merlo has been talking about finding ways for his company to work more closely with physicians for the past year or so. With the Aetna all but in the bag, it may not be too long before that possibility manifests with a dive into the urgent care pool, if a new post on the HealthLeaders …
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Antibiotic stewardship has become something of a buzz phrase in many healthcare settings. Don’t forget what it really means or what’s at stake, though. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 30% of antibiotics in the United States are prescribed unnecessarily. And for every misguided script, the risk of antibiotic resistance increases. At least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics every …
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North Carolina’s Medicaid program has spent at least $75 million for patients to have nonemergency complaints addressed in the emergency room over the past couple of years. According to a new report released by the state, patients have to gone to the ED with primary complaints as mundane as bad breath, sunburn, bunions, and common warts. The report goes on to specify that those concerns—and many more—could be handled much less expensively and just as …
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Case The patient is a 12-year-old boy who presents with sudden hip pain that started simultaneously with a “popping feeling” in the same hip. He reports that it started in the middle of his football game earlier in the day. View the image taken and consider what the diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the next page.
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Urgent message: PRICE (protection, rest, ice, compression and elevation) treatment is often advised to patients as part of sports soft tissue injuries; however, incorrect use of cryotherapy may lead to complications. Amitesh Kumar, MD Introduction Cryotherapy involves application of ice on acute soft tissue injuries in the form of ice cubes, ice packs, ice towels, ice massage, frozen gel packs, ethyl chloride, and other chemical devices. The goal is temperature reduction of 10-15⁰ C1 to …
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Urgent message: A tight labor market combined with stagnant real wage growth and shifting worker expectations has placed the onus on employers to rethink their approaches to attracting, engaging, and retaining talent. Thus, the challenge for talent-hungry industries such as healthcare is to fully reimagine their workplaces such that they become the “employer of choice” for the modern, millennial-dominated workforce. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc As a nation, the U.S. is well into what experts …
Read MoreThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has spelled out the best way to ensure providers who work in your urgent care center heed the advice they’re supposed to be giving patients (in short, Get a flu shot). It’s a simple one: Tell them they have to, and make it easy for them to. The CDC just released data for last year’s flu season on the influence of employer-imposed requirements to receive an influenza vaccination …
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