Practice Management
If your urgent care center has not seen a boom in patients reporting with flu-like symptoms, don’t assume it’s going to be a slow influenza season. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the annual peak is merely delayed, not lower than expected. In fact, most of the United States is still seeing a gradual climb in reported cases with this year’s peak not expected until at least January. New Jersey and South Carolina …
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Patients are coming to believe that exchanging emails with physicians improves the quality of their care. While that may come into play most easily in the primary care setting, urgent care providers might want to heed this growing trend and deepen patient loyalty by establishing electronic points-of-contact for patients, if they haven’t already. Nearly half of the participants in a new study from Kaiser Permanente have used email to communicate with their providers about test …
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Local, state, and federal health officials are reminding clinicians and occupational medicine providers to follow safe immunizations practices in the wake of serial missteps during a workplace vaccination program in New Jersey. An article published in the December 18 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report notes “disregard for basic vaccine safety” that set in motion a mad scramble to assess and contain any potential danger to 67 workers whom they believe received shots with …
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Optum has followed up its acquisition of urgent care provider MedExpress by buying a chunk of ProHealth Physicians, an independent physician group based in Connecticut. Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, has been on a healthcare shopping spree over the past two years. The latest deal gives Optum control over ProHealth’s administration and other backend operations. The primary-care medical group will continue to be physician-owned, however. ProHealth has stated its plans to move toward risk-based …
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If patients start paying more for visiting out-of-network emergency rooms, the American College of Emergency Physicians suggests it will be the government’s fault, not physicians’ or hospitals’. ACEP joined with the Emergency Department Practice Management Association in crafting a response to a new federal rule that would bar insurers from charging plan members higher copayments when they visit out-of-network EDs. That law does not prohibit doctors and hospitals from “balance billing” consumers if the insurers …
Read MoreData from the 2014 Urgent Care Chart Survey of 1,778,075 blinded visits by patients to more than 800 different urgent care clinics, conducted by the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, reveal that for 2014, the top three medication classes by volume projected to be prescribed at U.S. urgent care centers were, in descending order: Oral antibiotics, 72.9 million Corticosteroids, 20.5 million Narcotic analgesics, 14.9 million The survey’s methodology and data abstraction forms were initially designed …
Read MoreQ. Is there a global period for the diagnosis used for follow-up on an evaluation and management (E/M) code when there is not a change in the chief symptom? We had a patient with a skin irritation for which the provider prescribed a hydrocortisone cream for the diagnosis of “dermatitis, unspecified” (L30.9). The provider instructed the patient to return in 1 week if the condition did not clear up. The patient returned 3 days later …
Read MoreAn 11-year-old boy presents with pain over the right clavicle that developed the previous day while he was playing football and another player fell on him. He has pain with range of motion of the right shoulder as well as with movement of the torso. He has no shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, or numbness of the arm. View the image taken (Figure 1) and consider what your diagnosis would be.
Read MoreSEAN M. McNEELEY, MD When Accuracy Is a Must, Go for Central Thermometers Key point: Peripheral thermometers are not nearly as accurate as central thermometers. Citation: Niven DJ, Gaudet JE, Laupland KB, et al. Accuracy of peripheral thermometers for estimating temperature: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Intern Med. 2015; 163:768–777. Temperature measurement is performed at most visits to urgent care centers. Although the data are not always important in clinical decision-making, sometimes they are …
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Urgent message: Patients with imminently life-threatening conditions can present to an urgent care appearing to be in good health or even with a viable alternative explanation for their symptoms. It is important to be vigilant for red flags of serious illness. ARASH MIRZAIE, MS4, and MICHAEL WEINSTOCK, MD Headache is one of the most common presenting complaints in ambulatory settings. Urgent care providers must rapidly evaluate and diagnose a variety headache types in a time-limited …
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