Practice Management
The need to reduce access to opioid pain medications is pretty well accepted at this point, though much of the outcry is vague and often geared toward echoing statistics about the very real epidemic of addiction and death. However, Intermountain Health, which operates InstaCare urgent care centers in Utah and Idaho, has gone a step further by crunching its own numbers and devising a plan to cut opioid prescriptions across its systems by 40% by …
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Lax record keeping, the transient nature of online identities, and continually changing mobile phone numbers make it hard enough to keep tab on “who’s who” in your patient records. Add common names to the mix and it’s easy to see how patient identity could be hard to keep straight—the consequences of which could be severe in terms of patient safety and your adherence to confidentiality laws. New Jersey thinks one solution would be Master Person …
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The Urgent Care Association vowed to represent the industry’s interests when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its final rule implementing the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) last October. In effect, CMS imposed guidelines for clinicians participating in Medicare’s Quality Payment Program (QPP), and defined two possible pathways: the Merit-Based Payment Incentive Program (MIPS) or the Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs). UCA made good on its promise this week by …
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Hospitals and health systems have been taking a hard look at how they can maintain financial stability in recent years. As you’ve read here, many are venturing into urgent care, both on and off campus. Now, some are taking another step toward becoming everyday community health providers by offering, essentially, primary care in their emergency rooms. An article in Modern Healthcare details how one of them, Carolinas Healthcare System, realized the same old way of …
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Health system administrators and fans of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) have been lauding the fact that employment in the healthcare industry has been climbing since the ACA was implemented. While that may be factually correct in terms of overall numbers, it is also true that health systems have been cutting jobs strategically in order to cut payroll expenses. Not too long ago, Becker’s Hospital Review identified 48 layoffs that have taken place …
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Medicaid recipients who go to Tennessee emergency rooms with nonemergent complaints cost the state nearly $85 million a year, according to a report published online by WATE television in Knoxville. The data show federally and state-funded nonemergent ED visits drove up costs 25% in 2016 compared with the previous year. Some of the most common complaints that could have been treated in a lower-acuity (and less costly) setting like urgent care included acute upper respiratory …
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Rancor over how—or even whether—to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) doesn’t stop everyday people from needing good, immediate care they can afford. Urgent care often fits the bill, but even that may not be convenient enough for some patients; a new study from the Health Resources and Services Association (HRSA) shows that 20% of Americans live in rural areas—where only 11% of physicians practice. In such situations, telemedicine could be the best …
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It isn’t news that patients sometimes receive bills that seem out of proportion to the care they received in an emergency setting (especially a freestanding emergency rooms)—and that the media and state legislatures have taken notice. A new statewide survey in New Mexico reveals that nearly a third of patients say they received large “surprise bills” after seeing clinicians outside their insurer’s network. In addition, data from the Consumer Federation of America and the North …
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The 40th annual report on the state of the health of Americans from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides insights on the impact of changes in the healthcare landscape, including the years that saw urgent care grow from the “doc in a box” (in the public’s perception, anyway) to the sophisticated, integral part of the healthcare system that it is recognized as today. The CDC’s Health, United States, 2016 reports on long-term trends …
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Urgent care operator American Family Care (AFC) has inked an investment deal worth $1 billion with the private equity and real estate firm American Development Partners. The funds will be put to work expanding AFC’s presence around the country, with the expectation that 300 more franchises will open under the AFC banner (currently, there are 170). AFC is quick to note that the company will not change hands, and that it will continue to invest …
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