bnapolitano, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Behavioral Health Services Continue to Grow in Urgent Care

Just last week, we told you that Tennessee-based Fast Pace Urgent Care was making an effort to bring behavioral health services to underserved rural communities across the South. Now comes word that another regional operator is following suit. Zoom+Care is going to start offering same-day mental health appointments, either in-person or virtually, through two of its Bellevue, WA locations. In announcing the initiative, Zoom+Care reasoned that people in crisis often have to wait days or …

Want More Time with Patients—and to Be Compensated for It? CMS Might Have That

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has finalized a rule intended to ease cumbersome—and time-consuming—billing and coding requirements and increase reimbursements for services clinicians are already providing (such as those related to certain chronic illnesses). At the heart of the new system is an overhaul of the Evaluation and Management structure, which was designed and implemented in the mid-1990s, before the explosion of urgent care, widespread use of electronic health records, and secure data …

One Visit, Multiple Complaints: Meeting the Patient’s Needs without Giving Services Away

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. Urgent message: While it’s common for urgent care patients to raise multiple medical concerns during an urgent care visit, there is only one “chief complaint”—the potentially most serious of all concerns during that visit. It’s a frequent occurrence for patients to present in an urgent care center with multiple medical …

Amazon Is Wading Deeper into Primary Care—Internally (for Now, at Least)

Amazon is investing more resources into Amazon Care, its in-house primary care program in Seattle. The company announced it’s buying Health Navigator, which provides technology and other services to digital health companies. While the financial details of the deal are undisclosed, last year Amazon plunked down $753 million to buy the online pharmacy company PillPack. The message is that they’re betting heavily that they can realize substantial cost savings by facilitating primary care for employees …

Join JUCM and the CDC to Get Involved—and Save Lives—During Antibiotic Awareness Week

You know the numbers—some 23,000 American die every year from drug-resistant infections, painting a clear but ugly picture of the effects of inappropriate use of antibiotics. You probably also know, fundamentally, that reducing the number of prescriptions written will help reduce that risk. The question of how to do so is a bit more challenging, especially now that cold and flu season is upon us and driving herds of antibiotic-seeking patients to your facility. Aware …

CDC: Too Few Pregnant Women Are Getting Vaccines. Help Them See Why They Must

Two-thirds of pregnant women in the United States are leaving themselves at risk for influenza, tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis by declining to get the necessary vaccinations, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obviously, that also puts their unborn children at risk, ratcheting up the urgency to help them understand that both the flu shot and the Tdap vaccines are not only safe but necessary for their own protection. It’s …

Sometimes It’s Not Prescribing, but Taking Away Medications That Saves a Life

Unfortunately, many patients become unknowing conduits to illicit use of prescription drugs, consequent addiction, and sometimes even death. They receive an appropriate prescription for, say, an opioid pain medication that they take responsibly for as long as necessary. Then they put the remaining pills back in the medicine cabinet, where anyone in the house can get hold of them and take them recreationally or to feed an addiction. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration created the …

New Guidelines Stress Appropriate Treatment for a Deadly Combination: Flu + CAP

It’s widely believed that the number of flu deaths is much higher than data would lead us to believe each year, due to the fact that cause of death is often attributed to complications from flu. One of the main culprits is community-acquired pneumonia. So, for the first time in more than 10 years, the Infectious Diseases Society of America has updated its guidelines on treating CAP. The take-home message is that adults who test …

Is Mental Health Urgent Care Ready for Primetime? One Company Is Willing to Find Out

Numerous urgent care centers have dabbled in mental health urgent care over the years, to little positive effect in terms of patient volume or revenue. Times—and marketplaces—change, however. In rural areas, especially, where both medical and mental health providers can be few and far between, the idea of offering a broader array of services that include counseling might work. At least one urgent care operator is making a serious effort to find out if that’s …

Dismiss Potential Diagnoses Based on a Patient’s Age and You’re Inviting Death and Litigation

An Alabama urgent care center learned the hardest possible way that it’s a mistake to assume a young, healthy-appearing patient wouldn’t have a life-threatening condition in spite of worsening symptoms. The patient in question was a 20-year-old college student who first presented with shortness of breath, chest pain, headache, and sore throat. The diagnosis reached that day was bronchitis, for which she received a prescription for an antibiotic and advice to return if her symptoms …