Practice Management
Urgent care operators who offer occupational medicine services have gotten very adept at making their case for blue collar worksites, as well as corporate offices. Now public schools are catching on to its benefits—as in the Appleton WI area, where employee health clinics are saving districts big money while providing efficient care when and where it’s needed most. The Kimberly, Appleton, and Neenah public schools are among the districts that have opened clinics run by …
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A 16-year-old presents with an irregular patch of skin on his chest, reporting that it has become increasingly hyperpigmented over the past year. He also says the same area has had in increase in hair growth in recent months View the image taken (Figure 1) and consider what your diagnosis would be.
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The most successful urgent care centers, by definition, have found a way to set themselves apart from their competitors. Besides offering excellent care, many make the effort to find a niche that demonstrates a sound understanding of what patients in their area seek in an urgent care provider. Direct Urgent Care in San Francisco has done just that by starting to offer HIV prevention services, while Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care is considering doing to the …
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Membership-based payment models might offer the best of both worlds for urgent care operators and patients. The way Valley Immediate Care in southern Oregon structured its version, patients paying a small monthly fee get discounts—50%—on most services needed at the time of a visit. My Urgent Care 365 has enticed new patients to visit the clinic, helping to increase revenue in the process. Valley Immediate Care CEO Brent Kell will share some insights into how …
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The dangers of copy-and-paste functionality in electronic health records outweigh the benefits of convenience, according to a new report by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology in conjunction with ECRI and the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command. Interviews with physicians and nurses using the military’s AHLTA EHR uncovered a “high potential risk of entering wrong information in the wrong chart” when copying-and-pasting. One common error cited in the report: Clinicians forget to …
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The mainstream media love to remind the public (ie, your prospective patients) that flu season is still in full swing. That being the case, why shouldn’t one of your physicians be the talking head assuring patients that all will be well if they do the right thing? When WJRT in Flint, MI did its most recent report on school districts’ efforts to fight influenza, Peter Stoyanoff, MD was there on screen, talking about what he …
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) says patients reporting to emergency rooms in Maryland are likely to wait over twice as long as the national average—53 minutes vs 22 minutes. Greater Baltimore Medical Center (BMBC), whose ED clocked an average wait time of 60 minutes, suggested patients could get in and out much more efficiently if nonemergent patients sought care in a more appropriate environment, such as BMBC’s primary care offices. This echoes …
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There’s no shortage of patients reporting to urgent care centers with back pain being their chief complaint. A new study published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases confirms they’re not likely to get satisfactory relief from nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), though. Machado, et al looked at 35 randomized, placebo-controlled trials that compared the efficacy and safety of NSAIDs with placebo for spinal pain. They found that treatment effects met the threshold for clinical importance in …
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A pilot program in Prince George’s County, Maryland has trained firefighters responding to 911 calls from patients who don’t meet the criteria for true emergent care. In one case cited in a Washington Post article, responders checked on a woman who was in the habit of calling 911 several times a week, with an unnecessary (and costly) trip to the emergency room following most often before the program launched. On that day, though, she had …
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Urgent Message: Blogging is a relatively simple, inexpensive, and completely customized marketing tool too often underutilized by urgent care operators. Employed correctly, however, it can help search engines deliver potential patients to your website at any time of day or night. These days, it doesn’t matter if a patient is trying to find a nearby urgent care facility or research a medical condition to determine if they need medical attention. They won’t be looking in …
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