Harris Fleming, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Budgets Are Tight, but So Are Staffing Levels. Disregard Employee Satisfaction at Your Own Risk

We don’t have to tell you that in 2023 there is no room for fat in the budgets of urgent care operations (or any other healthcare business). One area in which businesses in all industries look to ensure efficiency is how much they spend on the staff. When times are tight, tough decisions have to be made. Sometimes that means layoffs, and sometimes it means cutting back on spending. Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health learned …

Update: Don’t Underestimate the Growing Risk of Severe Strep A

Just a few weeks after we told you hospitals across the country were seeing far more cases of severe Streptococcus A infection than in a typical year, mainstream media outlets are again sounding the alarm that the tripledemic should not be the only concern for healthcare providers and families. According to a report from WWMT in Grand Rapids, MI, Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, for one, has seen four cases of severe infection linked to group …

MIS-C May Be More of a Threat than We Originally Thought—Especially for Children of Color

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it appeared that children were at much lower risk than adults for poor outcomes, or even for becoming infected at all. As time went on it became clear that a COVID-related complication, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), was a threat to children’s lives—but, again, it appeared to be a rare occurrence and so did not garner the attention that it now appears it should have. A study …

Ransomware Attacks Doubled in Just 5 Years. Are Your Preventive Measures Keeping Pace?

If it seems like you’ve been reading more than ever about ransomware attacks in JUCM News and elsewhere, there’s a good reason: A new study released by JAMA Health Forum reveals that the annual number of healthcare ransomware attacks doubled over a 5-year period, from 43 attacks in 2016 to 91 in 2021. In total, 342 attacks exposed the personal health information of nearly 42 million patients. While hospitals were the most likely targets, statistically, …

Renewed Interest in Ketamine Could Drive Patients Your Way—Be Prepared

A new wave of specialty clinics is stoking renewed interest from mainstream media and patients in the purported benefits, as well as the risks, of ketamine to treat select mental health issues. Medpage Today published an article online detailing how some providers—one of whom holds a medical license in 45 states—have established booming online “practices” devoted exclusively to facilitating access to ketamine. While ketamine has been used successfully in treating depression and anxiety, the Food …

Tripledemic Update: Watch Out for More COVID—Thanks to a New Variant—as Flu and RSV Recede

The fall and winter months have seen nearly constantly fluctuations in rates of COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus, and influenza. Reports from around the country show this is unlikely to change anytime soon. WKRC TV aired a story noting that while flu and RSV have been declining in the Cincinnati area, COVID has had a resurgence that is pushing an ever-growing number of patients to not only area hospitals, but also urgent care centers. Data from …

Like PA’s, Urgent Care NP’s Earn Relatively More Than Peers in Other Settings

Not too long ago, we reported that physician assistants practicing in urgent care are among the most well-compensated PAs in the U.S. healthcare workforce. Now, with the release of more data in the 2022 Advanced Practice Provider Compensation and Productivity Survey as reported by Becker’s Hospital Review from SullivanCotter, we can tell you that while nurse practitioners don’t rank quite as high as PAs compared with their peers in other settings (sixth vs third, respectively), …

Warnings of a Seasonal Bump in Respiratory Infections Are Coming to Fruition—with More to Follow

As JUCM News readers know, public health officials and infectious disease specialists warned that holiday gatherings would likely prove to be fertile breeding grounds for COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus, and influenza. Just a couple of days into the new year, Alabama is the first state to announce that hospitalizations for COVID-19 started climbing shortly after Thanksgiving, to the point that they had essentially doubled (from 264 to 530) by New Year’s Day. Given that the …

North of the Border, Pharmacists Are Creeping Closer to Practicing Medicine

In a development that is sure to have implications in the United States healthcare marketplace, Ontario became the latest province in Canada to allow pharmacists to diagnose and prescribe medication for a finite list of acute ailments. According to a report from the CBC, it’s the second-to-last province to do so, with British Columbia being the only holdout at present. Only a handful of U.S. states have opted to let pharmacists “test and treat” a …

In Buffalo, a Validation of the Business of Urgent Care

When Buffalo Business First scanned the business community to determine its 2022 Business of the Year, they found no entity more deserving than Focus Urgent Care, a four-location operation founded by Greg Daniel, MD, MBA under the umbrella of his own Nidus Development company. It’s an especially striking achievement in that Daniel only opened Focus this past summer, occupying spaces previously run by WNY Immediate Care. Recognizing that certain needs were going unmet in Buffalo …