StuWilli, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Is America’s Uninsured Problem Being Replaced by America’s Underinsured Problem?

URGENT MESSAGE: Although the Affordable Care Act has made some progress in reducing the number of Americans without any health insurance, many of the newly insured are still unable to afford routine healthcare due to plan designs that include high deductibles, copays and coinsurance. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of JUCM—The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, a former member of the Board of Directors of the Urgent Care Association of America, …

Ohio Law Gives PAs More Clinical Authority with Less Physician Oversight

Physician assistants in Ohio now have more authority to make decisions—including more freedom to prescribe drugs—under a new law signed into effect by Gov. John Kasich. While PAs still must work under the supervision of a physician, they have more autonomy when it comes to ordering diagnostics, prescribing or directly providing medications, and administering local anesthesia. While urgent care centers typically have physicians on site most or all of the time, retail clinics like those …

FDA Panel Calls for Mandatory Opioid Training

Physicians who prescribe opioid pain medications would have to undergo a higher level of specific training under a guidance recommended by a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel. In response to a perceived epidemic of opioid addiction and related deaths, the panel voted unanimously to advice requiring more education about the drugs’ risks. The panel’s vote was unanimous, but not binding—though the FDA does often follow recommendations made by its outside expert panels.

Humana Follows United Out the ACA Exit Door

In advance of formal approval of its merger with Aetna, Humana plans to stop participating in some state insurance exchanges constructed under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”). The company says its member base dropped 21% compared with the first quarter of 2015. That includes those who bought policies under the ACA exchanges, which many insurers say are hard on their bottom lines to begin with. UnitedHealth Group was the first major insurer to …

IMS Health–Quintiles Merger Weds Research and Information Technologies

IMS Health Holdings Inc. and Quintiles Transnational Holdings are merging in an all-stock deal aimed at creating “a leading portfolio of anonymous patient records, technology-enabled data collection, and observational research experts to address critical healthcare issues of cost, value, and patient outcomes.” The new company, to be called Quintiles IMS Holdings, says its combined strength will be to support drug development from inception through demonstrating the value of new medicines. The 2015 combined revenue of …

Will New CMS Program Boost Medicare Quality Bonuses?

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) calls it a brand-new platform, while skeptics are saying it’s just the same-old structure with a fresh coat of paint. Either way, CMS is rolling out the Quality Payment Program, which it says will ease documentation requirements for physicians while also providing new opportunities to earn bonuses by providing quality care. Under the program, physicians can receive Medicare reimbursement by participating in either the Merit-Based Incentive Payment …

May 2016

Corporate Practice of Medicine: Could Your Current Operating Structure Be at Risk?

Urgent message: State laws prohibiting the corporate practice of medicine are often skirted by business arrangements that segregate a professional entity from a management company, but these arrangements can still pose significant risks to providers unless specific steps are taken to ensure the segregation of clinical and management activities. Introduction The corporate practice of medicine doctrine dates back to the inception of physician licensure laws. The tenet is derived from the legal requirement that only a …

Percentage of Annual Patient Visits by Month

Data from the 2014 Urgent Care Chart Survey of 1,778,075 annual visits by patients to more than 800 different U.S. urgent care clinics, conducted by the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, reveal that the busiest months of 2014 for patient visits were, in descending order: January, with 9.7% of all visits May, with 9.6% of all visits March, with 9.5% of all visits April and December, each with 9.1% of all visits The survey’s methodology …