StuWilli, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Stopping the Rise of Antibiotic Resistance: An Urgent Care Imperative

Urgent message: Antibiotic resistance is a worldwide problem with a local solution—one that starts in your urgent care center. Focusing on responsible prescribing, in combination with staff and patient education, will start to curb overprescribing. Every appropriate prescription you write and every inappropriate prescription you opt not to write is a step in the right direction. By 1980, scientists believed that roughly 3%-5% of Streptococcus pneumoniae were penicillin-resistant and by the turn of the century, …

January 2017

Navigating Around Legislative Obstacles and Proving Value in 2017

Urgent care in a shifting healthcare delivery environment brings to mind Shel Silverstein’s children’s classic, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O. In that tale, the missing piece stands alone, waiting for someone to come along and take it somewhere. Various shapes come by, but none are quite right. Some could not roll. Some had too many missing pieces. Finally, a shape comes along that fits just right and they roll along until the missing …

An Urgent Care Approach to Malignancy Complications

Urgent message: The prevalence of cancer is increasing—and along with it, malignancy-associated complications. Early recognition and management of these conditions is vital to alleviating patient morbidity and maximizing quality of life. Introduction Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world, accounting for over 580,000 deaths in 2013 in the U.S.1 With an aging population and more effective forms of treatment, the overall prevalence of cancer is increasing. Consequently, acute cancer-related complications …

Cost-Effective Staffing with Medical Assistants

Urgent message: Medical assistants (MAs) provide flexible, cost-effective clinical support for urgent care centers. With proper training and working under a physician’s supervision, an MA can perform most basic support functions in this setting. Introduction While there’s a lack of verifiable data as to the total number of unsuccessful urgent care endeavors, we can presume at least one common reason urgent care centers shutter their doors and permanently cease operations: they exhaust their working capital. …

FDA Warns Operators on Battery-Powered Medical Carts

The Food and Drug Administration says battery-powered medical carts are to blame for a series of fires in facilities across the country, leading the agency to publish a warning letter recommending that all medical offices, including urgent care centers, take preventive measures. While the size of some carts makes their use prohibitive in many urgent care locations, larger centers, such as those that might be affiliated with a healthcare system, that use such systems are …

MD Now Plots Further Growth for 2017

South Florida-based MD Now plans to nearly double the growth pace it set in 2016 by opening seven new locations this year. The company has set its course based on both population access and expansion of services. The 25 locations it already has are within 5 miles of 75% of residents in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. Its new centers will be located and built with an eye toward offering more occupational health and …

Nearing Capacity, a Hospital Points Patients to Urgent Care

An expected holiday rush moved Baptist Health Madisonville (Alabama) to implore area residents to try urgent care for medical needs that might not warrant a trip to its emergency room. Kristy Quinn, the hospital’s marketing and public relations director, says high traffic times like the early-winter holidays make it difficult for the hospital to treat low-acuity cases that could be handled safely in the urgent care setting. “If people can evaluate what they are coming …

Expect to See More Urgent Care NPs, PAs, and Telemedicine in 2017

The growth of telemedicine in urgent care and other settings is helping feed greater access to nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Relaxed scope of practice laws in both red and blue states, as well as evolving digital health technology that exploits the popularity of smartphones and tablets, make it easier and less expensive for patients to connect online—a model that typically employs NPs and PAs under the supervision of an on-site physician. This is further …

100 Largest Urgent Care Center Operators

The 100 largest urgent care operators in the United States run approximately 25% of the locations under their banners, according to research by Practice Velocity and National Urgent Care Realty. They’re getting even bigger, too; the number of locations owned by the companies on the list expanded by about 20% this year. While ownership was once delineated between hospital-affiliated and independents, several multi-unit operators now operate in some (but not all) of their markets as …