StuWilli, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Researchers Find Talk is Cheap in Assessing Retail Clinic Success

A new Cochrane Database review finds that while there’s a lot of chatter about the success of retail clinics, hard data on their effectiveness has yet to materialize. Chen et al, searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, and six other databases, as well as two trial registers, and conducted reference checking and citations searching, looking for any trials and controlled before–after studies. While they acknowledge “retail clinics have become popular alternatives to traditional physician offices and emergency …

Alabama May Lose Medicaid Funding for Cutting Off Some Enrollees

Alabama says it’s just trying to protect its coffers from being pilfered by criminals, but the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is taking a hard look at how the state is handling cases of alleged fraud by Medicaid enrollees. The state acknowledges that it rejects people who would otherwise be eligible for Medicaid funding if those individuals “have been found” to have engaged in fraud—even if they were never convicted of a crime, which …

Metro Urgent Care Plays Up Workforce Angle in Announcing Expansion

Metro Urgent Care is set to launch a major expansion in Colorado, with plans to more than double its footprint by opening 25 new clinics in the Centennial State over the next 6 months. Currently, it has 20 locations there. While such aggressive plans speak to both the company’s past success and faith in the continued growth of the urgent care market, it’s interesting to note that it is choosing to promote its expansion as …

Medical Care for Traveling Teams: An Alternative View of Travel Medicine

Urgent message: International travel and high-impact competitive sports combine to equal a strong need for consistent, high-quality medical care that’s immediately accessible. Could your urgent care center provide it? Travel medicine, sports medicine, and episodic injury care are all within the purview of urgent care practice.1 Urgent care physicians and other healthcare providers are often tasked with provision and/or consultation for healthcare management of traveling groups and nonprofessional teams, including sports organizations, charity groups, mission …

Gag Order on Physician Discussion of Guns Is Overturned—for Now

One side will say it’s a restoration of freedom of speech for doctors concerned about a legitimate public health issue. The other will say it’s a step down the slippery slope toward unfair restrictions on the right to bear arms. Either way, a federal appeals court says physicians in Florida are free to ask patients if they own a gun whether the question is medically relevant at the time or not. The decision effectively overturns …

More Insurers Are Requiring Urgent Care Center Accreditation

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York are the latest insurers to require that urgent care centers become accredited before contracting, or as a requirement to maintain in-network status. As noted in a recent posting by Becker’s Hospital Review, such policies highlight growing demand for healthcare providers in all settings to demonstrate both value and quality care—both of which have long been touted as attributes of well-run …

Health Spending Predictions Favor Urgent Care

The next decade will see national health expenditures grow 5.6% annually, according to projections from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), ensuring that the need for cost-effective, high-quality care will continue to grow as well. If CMS’s Office of the Actuary is correct in its estimate, the jump in healthcare spending will outpace projected growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 1.2%. The portion of the GDP consumed by healthcare spending is …

A Mint on Your Pillow, and an Urgent Care Doctor at Your Disposal

Guests at Hawai‘i’s Royal Kona Resort don’t have to go too far or enlist Google to find a doctor if they get a toxic dose of the sun or need a jellyfish sting looked at. The hotel offers guests the convenience of seeing a physician from DOCNow Virtual Healthcare Centers right in their own room (or the lobby or even the poolside bar) every day of the year, from 8 am to 9 pm. It …

More Hospitals Are Expanding Care by Adding Urgent Care Locations

A South Carolina hospital group is the latest institution to try to cash in on urgent care’s growing appeal, by franchising four urgent care facilities in the upstate region. Bon Secours St. Francis will brand its “new” properties Bon Secours Express Care, in concert with the one urgent care location it has in Greenville, SC. A new article published in the GSA Business Report, an online journal covering various industries in South Carolina, cites data …

Ongoing Mumps Surge Speaks to Need for Broad-based Urgent Care

Coming off its highest calendar-year incidence in a decade, mumps struck 495 people in the U.S. in the first 28 days of 2017 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The cases are spread across the entire breadth of the country, from Washington to Pennsylvania, pointing to a need for vigilance and preparedness in urgent centers in every region. First, clinics must be ready to assess patients and confirm or dismiss a …