Practice Management
The patient is a 78-year-old man who says he has felt dizzy for several hours. He denies chest pain, shortness of breath, or diaphoresis. Upon exam, you find: General: Alert and oriented; breathing comfortably Lungs: Clear bilaterally Cardiovascular: RRR without m/r/g Abdomen: Soft and nontender, no pulsatile mass Extremities: No pain or swelling, pulses normal and equal in all 4 extremities Review the ECG and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. …
Read MoreAlan 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: Lease “exclusivity of use” provisions prohibiting competing urgent care centers, walk-in medical clinics, primary care offices, etc. are often used in leases to protect an urgent care center, but there are implications for both landlord and tenant. “Landlord agrees that no other space in the Fairland …
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Visits to Zoom+Care locations are growing at a double-digit pace in both the Seattle and Portland markets, prompting the company to hire over a hundred new workers in order to meet the increased demand. How do we know this? The good news was called out in the Portland Business Journal recently, after which that article was blasted out via social media by Zoom+Care itself—for thousands of prospective patients and business leaders to see. The growth …
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The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s unanimous recommendation that Congress do away with “incident-to” billing could have a strong effect on physician assistants and nurse practitioners—and therefore, considering the growing role PAs and NPs play in this setting, on urgent care overall. If incident-to billing is eliminated, PAs and NPs will have to bill independently and at a lower reimbursement rate than they do now. Currently, the services of PAs and NPs who are truly assisting …
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A new GoHealth Urgent Care-supported study by The Health Management Academy indicates that 74% of leading health systems are likely to expand their urgent care presence over the next 5 years, though only 11% say they’re “thriving” in urgent care at this point. (For purposes of the survey, “leading health systems” include the top 25 U.S. health systems based on net patient revenue per health system.) According to Thriving in the Urgent Care Market: The …
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Urgent message: Taking your business from stagnant to successful is not an easy task, but it can be done with the right team, a creative approach, and laser focus on your core functions. Jonathan Sachs Never let a good crisis go to waste –Winston Churchill INTRODUCTION The situation was fragile: Disappointing financial results, low morale, high turnover, leadership in transition, and an uncertain future. Things needed to change, and they needed to change quickly. But …
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Much has been written and said about the preferences of patients in the Millennial generation (defined by Pew Research as anyone born between 1981 and 1996). And rightly so; they’re a sizable portion of your prospective patient population. What may be overlooked, however, is the fact that this same age segment also makes up a sizable portion of your prospective workforce, including physicians. In fact, according to a blog post on the UCA website, authored …
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It’s estimated that 23,000 people in the United States die from drug-resistant infections annually. Overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics is one of the key culprits in that phenomenon. And yet, antibiotics are an indispensable weapon against disease; ceasing to prescribe them is not an option. The only answer is for all healthcare providers to prescribe responsibly. To learn more about what that really means in the urgent care center, carve out some time to …
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On the heels of a World Health Organization decision to classify burnout as a legitimate workplace phenomenon, the National Academy of Medicine just released a report focused on preventing, identifying, and helping to manage clinician burnout. It also estimates that between one third and one half of all clinicians in the United States are affected by burnout. Objectives laid out in the report include establishing positive work environments; addressing burnout in training and at the …
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Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine and is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care. Urgent message: Each year, the third full week of October is earmarked to celebrate an extremely valuable group of individuals in the urgent care world: medical assistants (MAs). We are in the middle of Medical Assistants Recognition Week for 2019—and Medical Assistants Recognition Day is today, Wednesday, October 23. While the …
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