Practice Management
I have a story I want to share with you, but I’m finding it hard to do without it reeking of privilege. This is a story about feeling 100% welcomed in one place when you don’t feel that way in many others. This is a rare for me, and perhaps it will feel like a poor example to you. Yet, it is part of my lived experience and brought something home for me that made …
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Dear Urgent Care, I remember the day we first met. It was a long-ago Christmas Eve early in the morning, and I had awakened with a terribly sore throat. I was despondent, knowing no one would be willing to take care of me on the holiday, which meant it wouldn’t be a very merry one for me. Then, there you were. In a brick building on a well-traveled highway, your lights were on and your …
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I’m assuming you saw news stories last month with headlines like this: “Walmart and Other Drug Stores Want to Help You Skip Trips to the Doctor.” Walmart Health is set to open 28 new locations in the coming year. Consumers can get testing and treatment for strep, flu, and COVID-19 at a Walmart pharmacy in 12 states, at Walgreens in 13 states, and at CVS in 10 states. Rite Aid is working on it, too. …
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Click Here to download the article PDF There’s been a lot of deep thinking around here lately. The questions we’ve been pondering have been with us for a long time, but often the answers don’t fully emerge when we want them to. They emerge when the moment is right. And sometimes, it takes new questions, or the same questions asked in a different way at a slightly different time or by a different person, for …
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In the May issue of JUCM, Josh Russell wrote in his Letter from the Editor-in-Chief about thinking differently about follow-up. If you are not a physician, physician assistant or nurse practitioner and decided to skip his letter that month because it seemed too clinical, I urge you to go back and read it. One of the aspects of Urgent Care that separates us from other kinds of healthcare operations—or used to—is the tight collaboration between …
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It’s a weird time right now, isn’t it? On one hand, visit volumes seem to be back to our pre-COVID “norms.” This should be business-as-usual to us, but it feels scary because everyone got used to volumes being so high for so long. On the other hand, everyone is short-staffed, so it’s a good thing we aren’t busier, but being short-staffed is also scary because we feel unprepared for the coming months when volumes go …
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Click Here to download the PDF of The Best Time to Plant a Tree. Urgent Care is definitely ready to start Driving Change again. The pandemic taught us how to be in crisis-response mode all day every day, to roll with wave after wave after wave of external changes, to constantly pivot and adapt, to maintain a furious pace because our communities needed us to. It also diminished opportunities to improve other skills—longer-term thinking, broader-scope …
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“Do you know what the first question anyone gets asked at these things nowadays?” asked a member at a recent industry event. I didn’t know the answer, and when I heard it, I was speechless. He said, “They ask you how many urgent cares you have.” Who are we becoming when this is our measurement of worthiness? When did size become the first thing that matters in our getting to know one another? Can we …
Read MoreThe first time I wrote this column was for the inaugural issue of JUCM in October 2006. Today I could reflect on how much has changed around us, yet how much has stayed the same, but you know…no one really cares about what’s happened since 2006. What we really care about is today, and tomorrow. What’s happening right NOW, and what’s going to happen NEXT. And that’s the inspiration for the 2020 Convention. Yep, I’m …
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Lou Ellen Horwitz, MA Finally, after months of looking for the right health system partner, you have a deal to purchase your clinics. Congratulations! There are many positives in your decision to partner to achieve your vision. And get ready. The next year or so, for yourself and your leadership team, will be extremely exciting, sometimes frustrating, and often a bit terrifying. To help you prepare, we offer some tips for surviving before, during, and …
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