Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

The year was 2006: Saddam Hussein was executed for crimes against humanity. The Wii gaming console debuted. Pluto lost its planetary status. High School Musical and Borat were the talk of the town in entertainment. And JUCM, The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine was born—the first and only peer-reviewed journal in the industry (which it remains to this day). Well, let’s just say that JUCM was the undisputed highlight of 2006! The whole idea for …

Telemedicine remains a hot topic of debate in urgent care circles. In fact, it seems like every urgent care conference I attend lately has a telemedicine track or expert panel. JUCM recently featured a point-counterpoint discussion between two industry leaders, Stanford Coleman, MD, MBA, FAAP and William Gluckman, DO, MBA, FACEP—whose opinions on the topic are as well-reasoned as they are divergent. So, let me add my two cents. The discussions and analyses I’ve been …

Like many of you, the fear of a medical malpractice claim casts a wide shadow over everything I do. Like most of you, my intent is always to do no harm and provide the best care possible for every patient despite significant challenges. And like all of you, I wonder how we got to a place where any level of inaccuracy or misjudgment became a breach of the standard of care. While some reforms have …

With the volume of dissent against Maintenance of Certification (MOC) now at a fever pitch, American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) boards are finally making changes to their recertification programs with the intent of reducing the burden on physicians. The issue could not be more acute than in urgent care, where many UCA member physicians have been practicing for years. Working outside of their specialties of training and growing more distant from the best practice …

Antimicrobial stewardship is defined as a coordinated program that promotes the appropriate use of antimicrobials (including antibiotics), improves patient outcomes, reduces microbial resistance, and decreases the spread of infections caused by multidrug-resistant organisms. Stewardship initiatives in the hospital are paving the way for the rest of healthcare through education campaigns, monitoring, and restrictions. Outpatient practice is beginning to catch up as the stories of resistance grow and the lines between nosocomial and community-acquired infections blur. …

Eliminating disruption, distraction, and dissatisfaction is paramount to delivering efficient and high-quality care these days. More than ever, urgent cares are competing to differentiate themselves by moving patients through the encounter faster and with a more reliably exceptional experience. We’ve adopted slick technologies and  reconfigured work flows to improve care delivery. So, why do our teams still struggle with consistency? Why do we still see high levels of burnout and turnover—and what can we do …

#TimesUp; #NeverAgain; #Privacy; #OpioidCrisis; #BlackLivesMatter…. The last year has been a dramatic one for turning points in long-festering social issues. For decades, we turned our cultural cheek on problems we knew existed (misogyny and bias) or should have seen coming (opioids, mass killings and privacy). But in 2017 and into 2018 we are witnessing a tidal wave of resistance and public denunciations against the ugly side of American life. A collective enough is enough echoes …