StuWilli, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Visits to Urgent Care Clinics Keep Climbing

The past five years have been another good stretch for the urgent care marketplace: new data from Accenture, a management consulting firm, show that visits to urgent care clinics increased 19 percent from 2010 to 2015 (projected)—equating to 176.8 million visits this year alone. By comparison, the retail clinic sector (which offers a more limited menu of services than the typical urgent care center) is also growing, expecting to receive 18.8 million patient visits this …

CDC’s Get Smart About Antibiotics Week 2015 Supports Urgent Care Patient Education

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Get Smart About Antibiotics Week 2015 offers an opportunity for urgent care center management to get the word out about both their own services and the importance of responsible antibiotic use. With more than a third of urgent care centers in the US writing between 73 and 144 prescriptions for antibiotics each month, clinicians are all too familiar with the patient who shows up looking for a Z-Pak …

October 1: Out with ICD-9, in with ICD-10

“Urgent care” was in its infancy and electronic medical records were practically the stuff of science fiction when the ICD-9 codes were released in 1979. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) takes one giant leap toward catching up with the launch of ICD-10 codes on October 1. As of that date, ICD-9 codes will no longer be accepted. CMS has said the new coding set is expected to “advance public health research and …

New Orleans Urgent Care Center Launches Clinical Trials

In & Out Urgent Care in New Orleans is the latest urgent care center to enter the world of clinical trials. Partnering with a company called Urgent Care Clinical Trials, the center is studying treatment of shingles (herpes zoster). It’s the first trial the center has participated in. In addition to advancing the practice of urgent care and available remedies for disease states studied, participation in clinical trials can be a new source of revenue …

Are Uber-like Medical Services Really a Practical Replacement for Urgent Care?

URGENT MESSAGE: The proliferation of smartphone-accessible, on-demand healthcare services delivered to patient homes has received a lot of media coverage recently, but the “UBER” model is hardly a practical replacement for walk-in urgent care. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for Practice Velocity, Practice Management Editor for JUCM—The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Urgent Care Association of America. Uber is …

Abstracts in Urgent Care: October, 2015

SEAN M. McNEELEY, MD Differentiate Bacterial from Viral to Decrease Unneeded Antibiotic Prescriptions Key point: The overprescribing of antibiotics is still an issue. Citation: Jones BE, Sauer B, Jones MM, et al. Variation in outpatient antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections in the veteran population: a cross-sectional study. Ann Intern Med. 2015;163:73–80. Concerns over the amount of antibiotic prescriptions continues. (See also “Delayed Prescribing of Antibiotics for Respiratory Tract Infections” in our September 2015 issue: http://www.jucm. …

Protecting Patient Privacy in the Cloud

K Royal, JD, CIPP/E, CIPP/US Urgent message: The shift in medical practice from written charts to integrated digital platforms has dramatically increased the visibility, size, and magnitude of health-care information breaches. There are specific steps urgent care operators should take with vendors to protect patient information in this new technological environment. The news makes it seem that data breaches occur on a fairly regular basis. The Ponemon Institute even named 2014 as the year of …

Value-Based Reimbursement Is Premature, But That Won’t Stop It

Lee A. Resnick, MD, FAAFP Private payor reimbursement trends nearly always follow Medicare’s lead, and at no other time in history has the physician reimbursement model been so scrutinized. In an attempt to control unwieldly healthcare spending, payors are understandably looking to be creative. When they look at the drivers for increased health spending, one thing is clear: Diagnostic testing and imaging services grew far faster since 2000 than any other health-care service. According to …