Clinical

With the COVID-19 situation changing by the minute—literally, at times—urgent care providers may feel swamped with competing demands for testing, treatment, and reassuring patients who really don’t have any related worries. Add to that the fact that there’s been little definitive direction from federal health agencies on how to treat patients who do have COVID-19. Now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a directive that could be helpful—both for patient care and …

Patients experiencing atrial fibrillation for the first time sometimes mistake their symptoms for a heart attack and call 911 or rush off to the emergency room. Once they’ve gone through it a few times, and understand that AFib is not high-risk in the short term, they tend to take a more relaxed approach. Some simply call their cardiologist or electrophysiologist so they can track the event. Others may be inclined to visit an urgent care …

COVID-19 is capturing the public’s attention more than any other health crisis right now. The concern, warranted or not, is that a worldwide pandemic will prove more deadly than any other outbreak in recent history. A more immediate, albeit secondary concern, as noted in an article just published online by Forbes, is that a variety of factors could conspire to create dangerous drug shortages. According to the Food and Drug Administration, one medication is already …

Urgent care as a whole has been at the forefront of trying to turn around the trend of overprescribing antibiotics. The Urgent Care Association even offers an Antibiotic Stewardship Commendation to urgent care operators who meet select criteria demonstrating responsible, effective use of antibiotics, and has an online Antibiotic Stewardship Toolkit. Now the UCA’s partner on the toolkit, George Washington University, is launching a new initiative called Be an Antibiotic Hero with the Antibiotic Resistance …

Millions of confirmed cases and thousands of deaths aren’t enough to convince a lot of Americans that many of their beliefs about influenza and vaccination are just plain wrong. So, more than half fail to get a flu shot and leave themselves and loved ones at increased risk. Clearly, the healthcare community in general has to do a better job of countermanding erroneous conceptions. New data released by the American Academy of Family Physicians may …

The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that 92 children have died from influenza so far this season—the highest number of deaths for this point in the season in a decade. Ominously, the CDC also points out that a second wave of flu outbreaks has been gaining momentum over the past few weeks. Overall, flu has killed an estimated 14,000 people this season, out of roughly 26 million confirmed cases. …

As we’ve pointed out—and as has been emphasized in mainstream media reports in recent weeks—far more Americans are at risk for contracting influenza than the coronavirus. The same holds true for associated deaths, as well. At least 15 million people have been diagnosed with flu so far this season. Mortality projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention range from 14,000 to 36,000. Compare that with the fact that as of February 17 there …

With the current coronavirus outbreak continuing internationally—including more than 42,700 cases and over a thousand deaths in China, as well as 13 confirmed cases in the U.S. to date, the World Health Organization was moved to create an all-new name to aid in tracking and to properly reflect the nature of the pathogen. What has been known up to now as 2019-nCoV will be called COVID-19 from this point forward. This will be important for …

Urgent care and emergency room physicians have been taken to task for writing too many prescriptions for patients who present with sore throat, earache, and other typical upper respiratory complaints. A new study out of Case Western Reserve University and published in the Journal of the American Dental Association points out that they need to be more vigilant when it comes to prescribing for patients who present with dental pain and swelling, however. One of …

Mainstream media coverage of the international 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak continues at a breakneck pace, even though there have been very few confirmed cases in the U.S. at this point. It seems to be weighing on every patient locked into a winter cold, but the fact is that many more patients are dying of influenza than are likely to even be exposed to 2019-nCoV. While clinicians should be vigilant for symptoms of 2019-nCoV and …