StuWilli, Author at Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Marketing Efforts Should Reflect New Technologies, Patient Preferences

A swell of evidence shows more and more that the way patients make choices about healthcare—and even access care—is changing constantly. About 5% of Google searches are for a health-related topic these days, and a Pew Research Center study found 62% of patients have used their smartphones to look up health-related information. And the Mayo Clinic estimates that 84% of patients want to partner with their physicians in making treatment decisions. In other words, patients …

Patients Follow Urgent Care Providers’ Advice for Follow-Up Care

When an urgent care physician suggests that a patient see another clinician for follow-up care, patients usually take that advice, according to a study by the Uniersity of Minnesota and Urgent Care Partners. In fact, 66% not only took the doctor’s advice to seek further care, but went to the specific provider recommended (though a specific provider was recommended just 21% of the time). Overall, 76% of patients who were told to seek follow-up care …

Urgent Care Seasonality: Monthly Average Visits as a Percentage of Average Daily Visits

The following chart, based data from a Practice Velocity study of more than 20,000,000 patient visits over a 5-year period, shows that urgent care exhibits a strong pattern of seasonality. The average daily visits in each month vary from average daily visits over the course of a year. For example, on an average day in July, there are 14% fewer patients than the baseline number, whereas in an average day in December, there are 25% …

The Effects of the National Correct Coding Initiative

Q. I understand that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has added National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI) edits that no longer allow the billing of debridement with hundreds of surgical codes. What is the impact? How do NCCI edits affect us in general? A. NCCI edits define when two procedure codes may not be reported together except under special circumstances. Medicare implemented NCCI to promote national correct coding methodologies and to control improper coding, …

Fever, Conjunctival Injection, and a Facial Papule

Case A mother brings her 10-year-old son to an urgent care center with a fever, conjunctival injection, and pharyngitis. She points out a smooth papule on his face that developed over the last few days. She says that he played with some kittens at a friend’s house about a week earlier, and she wonders if maybe he is extremely allergic to cats, because he has been rubbing his eyes ever since. View the image taken …

Hip Pain in an 80-Year-Old Woman

Case An 80-year-old woman presents to an urgent care center with left hip pain that she has had for 4 years but that has worsened in the last week. She reports that before the pain worsened, she had gone on a long walk with her grandson. The pain is worse with movement through the range of motion. She has taken ibuprofen, but it did not reduce her pain. She says that she has not had …

Abstracts in Urgent Care – December 2016

Sean M. McNeeley, MD Azithromycin May Not Be Helpful for Asthma Key point: There is no proven benefit from taking azithromycin for asthma. Citation: Johnston SL, Szigeti M, Cross M, et al; AZALEA Trial Team. Azithromycin for acute exacerbations of asthma: the AZALEA randomized clinical trial. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176:1630–1637. The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial reported here focused on treatment for 3 days for 199 adults with asthma exacerbations. One group received 500 mg of …

Original Research: HIV Screening in the Urgent Care Setting

Urgent message: Increasingly, Americans do not know their human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) serostatus. Implementing rapid HIV testing can allow your center to play a key role in identifying new cases of HIV and linking patients to care. Abstract Background: Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that an increasing number of Americans do not know their human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) serostatus. The CDC recommends routine screening for all patients 13 to …

Extreme Caution: The HIPAA Dos and Don’ts When Responding to a Subpoena for Patient Medical Information

Urgent message: When health-care providers or urgent care centers respond to subpoenas for patients’ medical information, it is vital that they respond promptly, respond with exactly the information requested and nothing more, and protect patients’ privacy and confidentiality. Introduction When producing documents in response to a subpoena demanding patient medical information, a health-care provider must know the dos and don’ts to avoid privacy and confidentiality violations, sanctions, and penalties. A subpoena is a court or …

A 14-Year-Old with Vomiting and Bumps on the Tongue

In Bouncebacks, which appears periodically in JUCM, we provide the documentation of an actual patient encounter, discuss patient safety and risk-management principles, and then reveal the patient’s bounceback diagnosis. This case is from the book Bouncebacks! Pediatrics, by Michael B. Weinstock, Kevin M. Klauer, Madeline Matar Joseph, and Gregory L. Henry, and is available at www.anadem.com and www.amazon.com. Can you spot the red flags without knowing the outcome? Introduction Note: The following is the actual …