StuWilli, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

The Importance of Having a Solid Job Description for Every Position in the Urgent Care Center

Urgent message: Having concise, complete, and up-to-date job descriptions for all employees in an urgent care center will pay off with better role performance, fewer employment disputes, and hopefully the elimination of the possibility of legal action. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, Experity Between 2012 and 2022, according to the U.S. Economic Census, health-care employment is expected to increase by 2.6% annually—or by 5 million jobs. This rate is approximately five times that projected for …

Urgent Care Management of Acute Otitis Media in Children

Urgent message: The possibility of ear infection is the most common reason parents seek care for their young children during viral upper respiratory infections with fever. Urgent care providers should know the new criteria for making the clinical diagnosis and how to use technology such as an acoustic otoscope before concluding that antibiotics are necessary. MICHAEL E. PICHICHERO, MD Diagnosing acute otitis media (AOM) is a visual process based on viewing the eardrum and determining …

Janitorial and Maintenance Roundtable: Best Practices for Managing Environmental Services

Urgent message: Every urgent care center must have a plan to clean and maintain its physical facility. In this JUCM-exclusive panel discussion, industry leaders share their insights on selecting an environmental services contractor, negotiating pricing, and maintaining service levels. Urgent care is often considered a blind product because patients generally lack the formal training necessary to assess the quality of the actual medical services delivered. As a result, satisfaction or dissatisfaction is determined in large …

Urgent Care Diagnosis and Management of Tick-Borne Diseases

Urgent message: As the incidence of tick bites increases, it is imperative for urgent care physicians to be able to recognize various species of ticks and the symptoms of tick-borne illnesses and to know what to do when a patient presents with a tick bite. TOYIN FAPOHUNDA-ADEKOLA, MD, MBA Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne infection in the United States (Figure 1) and Europe. With a total of 279,509 cases reported between 2003 and …

From Good to Great: A Guide for the Urgent Care Provider

It’s easy to think that all the steps we physicians and advanced practice providers must take before we are professionals make us great. After all, doesn’t everyone admire our impressive signature with its collection of professional certifications at the end? Not so fast. Greatness is not conferred or bestowed by degrees or certifications, and often it isn’t officially recognized. Instead, greatness is practiced, like yoga or karate. It is never a final achievement; it is …

How JUCM’s Editorial Process Helps Our Authors

Our authors do the hardest part of publication, researching and writing articles to add to the urgent care literature. Then once we have assessed the big-picture issues during peer review, we polish the manuscripts until they shine, through a process called copyediting. We take care to ensure that after editing, your writing still sounds like you, not like our editors. Here is a partial list of the issues that our editors address during copyediting: Grammar …

Drug-Resistant Lice: A Nuisance or an Opportunity for Urgent Care?

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of JUCM, The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, a member of the Board of Directors of the Urgent Care Association of America, and Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for Practice Velocity. URGENT MESSAGE: Twenty-five states are now seeing head lice that are resistant to most common over-the-counter remedies, creating a nuisance for parents and a potential business opportunity for urgent care. Between 6 and 12 million …

Physician Burnout Is on the Rise

Emphasis on timely patient flow, reducing wait times, and maximizing provider efficiency may leave urgent care clinicians at greater risk for burnout than ever before—and that’s on top of the pressures reported in a new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The data show that burnout rates, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation among physicians are going up and that satisfaction with work–life balance is going down. Fifty-four percent of the subjects reported at least one …

More Urgent Care Options = Lower ED Use in Massachusetts

As the number of urgent care facilities and retail clinics goes up, visits to the emergency room go down, according to the 2015 Cost Trends Report from the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. The number of urgent care facilities in the commonwealth grew eightfold between 2008 and 2015, the report says. The report noted a 30 percent drop in ED use when there’s a “convenient care” facility nearby. Meanwhile, the Center for Health Information and Analysis …

New Study: EDs Need to Step Up Their Game to Stem Overcrowding

There are new data supporting the belief that emergency rooms are not doing enough to stem overcrowding—a longstanding rationale for visiting an urgent care center for nonemergent complaints. A new study published in Health Affairs says that while more hospitals are adopting interventions to prevent overcrowding (eg, bedside registration, scheduling elective surgeries on weekends), far too many are not doing enough. Researchers from Albany Medical College, George Washington University, and Harvard Medical School report that …