Practice Management
The patient is a 32-year-old female who presents complaining of a fever and a rash, along with a sore throat, headache, and fatigue. On clinical examination, you note vesicles on the palms and soles. An erosion is present at the labial mucosa. A small vesicle is present on the hard palate. The patient\’s temperature is 100.5°F. Her blood pressure and vital signs are within normal limits. View the photos and consider what your next steps …
Read MoreUrgent message: Urgent care physicians may be well positioned to play a role in stemming the national epidemic of opioid dependence, providing much needed care for patients and adding a new facet to their own clinical practice. By Paolo T. Coppola, MD, FACEP and Matthew I. Salzberg Introduction The DSM-IV-TR defines dependence as “a cluster of cognitive, behavioral, and physiologic symptoms that indicate a person has impaired control of psychoactive substance use and continues use of …
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Q. On our new superbill, there is a spot to code for Phenergan (generic is promethazine HCI) 50 mg when administered intramuscularly. How would we code for Phenergan when the physician orders Phenergan 25 mg IM? Do we mark the code x ½? Anonymous, Illinois A. If you administer 50 mg of promethazine or any portion of 50 mg, then you use code J2550 (injection, promethazine HCI, up to 50 mg). For example: 25 mg …
Read MoreIncidence of AMI in Patients with Syncope Key point: In a cohort study of nearly 1,500 patients presented without ST-segment elevation. Citation: McDermott D, Quinn JV, Murphy CE. Acute myocardial infarction in patients with syncope. CJEM. 2009; 11: 156-160. Which patients with syncope require hospital admission? To answer this question, researchers studied the incidence of acute myocardial infarction within 30 days of presentation in a cohort of 1,474 consecutive emergency department patients who presented with …
Read MoreIn early 2008, UCA revamped its annual survey in conjunction with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University with the goal of assuring that the UCA Benchmarking Committee’s efforts produced a scientifically valid report. Here we present some of the findings from the landmark survey, to which 436 urgent care centers responded. In this issue: What benefits do urgent care centers provide for their physician employees? Acknowledgement: Adapted from Urgent Care Centers in the …
Read MoreIdentifying the right contact person at a prospective client company begins with a sound, well-conceptualized, and up to date mailing list. Central to the list is the name of the individual responsible for the health and safety of the workforce. This information needs to be verified or updated regularly, something that could be accomplished by having a clerical staff member or high school student call every employer in your database each summer.
Read MoreJohn Shufeldt, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP I just completed teaching a semester of Health Law and Ethics at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Over the next few months in this column, my goal is to distill te 40-hour course down to a few pages chock full of practical legal information. Lesson 1: Torts A tort is a civil wrong committed against a person or property interest for which the court …
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Jonathan is a young man who changed the course of musical theater and would still be making history today if things had turned out differently. Jonathan was born in Mount Vernon, NY in 1960. When he was 22, he moved to New York City to pursue his dream of writing a musical. Like most struggling artists, life wasn’t easy. He spent weekends waiting tables at the Moondance Diner in Soho. He spent weekdays at his …
Read MoreUrgent message: Creating a safety culture in the urgent care clinic starts with proper hand washing before even seeing a patient and ends with transitioning care out of the practice – and includes close attention to every detail in between. The second of two parts. Phillip Disraeli MD, FAAFP The Institute of Medicine’s 1998 Report to Err is Human grabbed media attention by estimating that 98,000 deaths each year can be attributed to adverse events …
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