Practice Management
Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, is Practice Management Editor for JUCM, serves on the Board Directors of the Urgent Care Association of America, and is Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives for Experity. Urgent Message: Flu shots decrease health-care expenses, workplace absenteeism, and lost productivity, so why do most insurers not cover their cost when patients get the shots at urgent care centers? It is time for this practice to change. According to the U.S. Centers for …
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Urgent message: Patients often infer quality on the basis of outward appearances. Adopting a policy that addresses clothing, grooming, and body art can help balance the need to project a professional image in the urgent care center and to ensure workplace safety with employees’ desire to express themselves. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity Remember the popular 1990s advertising slogan “Image is everything”? What was back then a trendy catchphrase created to peddle expensive …
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Urgent message: Rapid growth of the urgent care industry has led to increased competition but little differentiation among urgent care providers, which consumers tend to view as “pretty much the same.” The opportunity for urgent care is thus to foster patient loyalty by creating differentiated brands, which starts by taking a process approach to the patient experience. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Urgent care is maturing into a big business. In 2015, the industry’s nearly …
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Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, is Practice Management Editor for JUCM, serves on the Board Directors of the Urgent Care Association of America, and is Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives for Practice Velocity. Urgent Message: Every urgent care center should have a policy addressing the various issues of communication, safety, pay, operations, and human resources that will undoubtedly come up when bad weather strikes. If the paradigm shift fueling the success of the urgent health-care model …
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Urgent message: In a volume-driven business like urgent care, marketing should be viewed as an investment with a financial return that can be measured in order to allocate the center’s advertising dollars among the tactics most effective in generating patient revenue. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity Success in the “business” of urgent care boils down to one factor: “feet through the door.” That’s because once a center’s fixed costs are covered, each additional …
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Urgent message: As the Affordable Care Act encourages greater integration of health insurers, hospitals, and physicians, urgent care will play an important role in increasing patient access, improving clinical outcomes and reducing health care costs. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc, Experity Hospitals across the country are partnering with doctors and health insurers—linked by an electronic health record (EHR)—to form accountable care organizations (ACOs) as a way to control health care expenditures by coordinating patient care. …
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Urgent message: Just because you build it, patients won’t necessarily come. As entrepreneurs, successful urgent care center owners must market their services to the community, innovate with new services to fill excess capacity, and create positive patient experiences that spur repeat visits and positive word-of-mouth. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity One needn’t look further than the 20,000+ physicians already practicing in urgent care centers nationwide to grasp just how attractive this business model …
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Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of JUCM, serves on the Board of Directors of The Urgent Care Association of America, and is Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Experity. Urgent Message: Whether an urgent care center should be open 365 days per year or close on major or minor holidays depends upon factors that influence profitability such as patient demand, competitive positioning, staff availability, payor reimbursement, and the branding impact of …
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Author: Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, Experity, Practice Management Editor, The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine with James Nawalaniec, St. Louis University URGENT MESSAGE: A growing urgent care operation has a constant need for working capital to open centers, expand existing centers, scale processes and technology, recruit providers and staff, and to support sales and marketing. While urgent care entrepreneurs have historically relied upon personal savings, bank loans or the equity investment of third parties, …
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Urgent message: This article is a broad overview of how lawyers work and charge and what to do to avoid some of the most common pitfalls inherent in the attorney-client relationship. ALAN A. AYERS, MBA, MAcc Practice VelocitySuccess in business entails being prepared and there will be times when it’s unavoidably necessary for you, the urgent care operator, to engage the services of an attorney. From structuring and starting up the business, to reviewing and …
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