Practice Management
Dignity Health, California’s biggest private hospital network, is pouring resources into the urgent care arena by opening the first of a dozen clinics it will operate with GoHealth Urgent Care in the San Francisco Bay area. Dignity says Americans “pay too much and get too little” for healthcare, and that urgent care can be a conduit to reducing waste. Treating a patient in urgent care vs the emergency room is also cheaper for the hospital, …
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Industry insiders have watched accountable care organizations (ACOs) thrive at the expense of smaller practices—including more than a few urgent care centers. Now one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as “Obamacare”), which laid the foundation for the ACOs, is having second thoughts. Bob Kocher, MD, who as a special assistant to President Obama helped shape the ACA, writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that in spite of …
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On-site medical facilities are common in manufacturing operations and even some larger corporate offices. However, smaller businesses are starting to look at skyrocketing healthcare costs and realizing there may be real benefits in having a provider on the premises, as well. One car dealership in Albuquerque, NM has seen its health costs and absenteeism go down since bringing in a provider to check out workers who aren’t feeling well, administer flu shots, and help employees …
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Major changes are afoot for urgent care centers that treat patients under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), thanks to a new rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is imposing. In addition to new requirements for insurers, the rule also creates new compliance and administrative burdens that could affect revenue for medical practices (eg, requiring care coordination between different settings and institution of quality-rating systems and allowing states to encourage …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has extended its travel warning for pregnant women to one area within Miami, as 14 people there have contracted Zika virus after being bitten by virus-carrying mosquitos locally. The first four cases were reported July 29, but that number more than tripled in just three days. Florida is the first state to report local transmission of Zika via mosquito. The CDC maintains there is no evidence of widespread …
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There’s no softening the blow when a community faces a devastating loss, as Dallas did recently when five police officers were murdered and nine others injured. As seen in New York City after 9/11, though, devastation can also be the catalyst for banding together and inspire ordinary citizens to support each other like never before. In the aftermath of the Dallas tragedy, the staff at Legacy ER and Urgent Care, which serves North Texas, expressed …
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A 67-year-old man presents with constipation that has been present for the preceding 2 days. He reports that he has had constipation in the past that resolved with the use of over-the-counter stool softeners, but this therapy has not worked with this episode. He has generalized abdominal pain that was mild initially but increased over the preceding day, which prompted his visit to the urgent care center. He describes the character of the pain as …
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“Convenient location” is a relative term; an address that works for the greatest number of people can still leave many patients outside of your urgent care center’s reach. Oregon’s Samaritan Health Services is trying to bridge that gap by taking its act on the road—Route I-5, to be exact. Pull into the truck plaza just off exit 216 and you’ll see what looks like a semi with SamCare Mobile Medical emblazoned on the outside. Inside, …
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Doctors who tire of typing into screens all day have often assumed that patients share their pain. While it may be true that patients usually do feel ill when they’re around an EHR—they’ve come to the urgent care center for a reason, after all—it probably isn’t the software that’s making them feel that way. A study of patients at a University of Chicago ambulatory clinic revealed positive impressions of physicians’ computer use; as a group, …
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Local media around the country are starting to report people being injured moving down the street—most often on foot, but some drivers, too—while distracted by the game Pokémon Go. Yes, some of them might end up in an urgent care center, but the most important thing for operators to be aware of is that Niantic, the game’s maker, plans to offer local advertising opportunities soon. The location-based game for mobile devices tracks the player’s movements …
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