Practice Management
CVS Health is one of the defendants in a federal lawsuit claiming that it and other companies failed to protect the HIV status of 6,000 patients in Ohio—not through an online data breach, but thanks to a poorly constructed envelope. The suit filed by three unidentified plaintiffs maintains that when CVS mailed letters to patients in the state’s HIV drug assistance program last year, the recipients’ HIV status was visible in the envelope’s glassine window. …
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Insurers, health systems, and state governments have cobbled together regulations on various aspects of prescriptions for opiates. The federal government is working on legislation aimed at curbing the opioid crisis, too. Walmart and Sam’s Club’s pharmacies aren’t waiting for new regulations to mandate the limits of opioid prescriptions, however. Instead, the parent company is imposing a limit of 7-days’ supply for patients who are prescribed opiates for acute, short-term pain. Those restrictions will start within …
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It would seem to be self-evident that your urgent care center needs to collect on all fees for care provided in order to stay in business. Whether by sloppy bookkeeping, honest mistakes, or well-intentioned attempts at “charity,” however, millions of dollars are going unclaimed for services rendered across the country, according to an editorial that appeared in the Chicago Tribune recently. The opinion piece, penned by the paper’s Editorial Board, goes so far as to …
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Despite vast improvements in the management of patient data thanks to the advent of electronic health records, too many people still have a hard time getting access to their own healthcare information, according to the Government Accountability Office. Under the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), this presents a problem for consumers and providers alike. HIPAA mandates that patients be able to receive a copy of their own medical …
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Columbia Medical Associates (CMA) of Spokane, WA chose to tackle runaway medical costs by taking a deep dive into the data pool, searching for areas where resources were being expended needlessly. The first glaring point: They had to reduce emergency room utilization without sacrificing patient care. One solution: Teach patients the concept of seeking the “right care at the right time.” That included getting them to realize they could be seen efficiently and receive excellent …
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On-demand care is no longer limited to urgent care and the emergency room. Retail clinics and telemedicine give healthcare consumers more choices than ever before. That’s done nothing to impede the growth of urgent care, however. The latest annual Benchmarking Report from the Urgent Care Association (formerly the Urgent Care Association of America) and Merchant Medicine shows that urgent care operators continue to see consistent, year-over-year growth in spite of the increased competition. That goes …
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To the average consumer, the key similarity between the urgent care center and the emergency room is plain to see: you get to see a doctor without an appointment. That’s deceptively simple, however, and doesn’t take into account relative wait times, cost to the patient and the insurer, whether the complaint is truly emergent, and the overall implications of going to the ED when it’s not necessary. FastMed Urgent Care, which owns and operates 109 …
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Medicare reimbursements to many freestanding emergency rooms will be cut significantly if a new recommendation by the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee (MedPAC) is implemented. MedPAC voted unanimously to reduce reimbursements to off-campus, 24-hour hospital EDs located in urban areas within 6 miles of an on-campus ED by 30%. According to an Erdman analysis of the proposal, freestanding, off-campus EDs typically have lower operating costs than on-campus EDs but receive the same Medicare payments—giving them higher …
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The ongoing growth of urgent care, among other trends, is at least partially responsible for an increasing scarcity of traditional primary care physicians, according to analysis of new data posted to Advisory Board. Citing research by the Health Care Cost Institute and an article just published in The New York Times, the piece notes that “the emergence of urgent care centers and retail clinics, as well as proliferating mergers between healthcare providers” is lowering patients’ …
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Sutter Health, which counts 32 urgent care clinics, 24 hospitals, and 35 surgery centers among its vast holdings, is the target of a lawsuit from the California attorney general, charging that it engages in anticompetitive practices that drive up prices for consumers and insurers. The suit is also viewed as an indictment of industry consolidation, which is resulting in fewer entities and less competition. While it has declined to comment on the suit specifically, Sutter …
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