Legislation

We told you recently about a new program in which ambulances may be used to transport Medicare patients not only to the hospital, but to urgent care centers in response to 911 calls that wind up to be nonemergent. This begs the question: Could rideshare services be employed to carry out the same vital function? Such has been raised in the Texas legislature, as detailed in an article just published in the Houston Chronicle. The …

The Department of Veteran Affairs has loosened its regulations about where veterans can seek care considerably in the past couple of years. In certain conditions, such as distance from or availability of care at a VA facility, they can head straight to a walk-in clinic without preauthorization. The Urgent Care Association took notice—close notice, in fact, and is urging the VA to tweak the policy. While the idea of allowing the patients it covers to …

When Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued a call for recommendations on how to lower the cost of healthcare in the United States, the Urgent Care Association put together a response packed with data on the relative merits of urgent care, both in terms of the quality of care and the dramatically lower cost compared with freestanding emergency rooms and hospital-based EDs. UCA suggested that a …

Just this month, we shared data from the American Association of Nurse Practitioners indicating that the number of nurse practitioners has grown considerably over the past year, and is expected to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Many are likely to gravitate toward urgent care, given this industry’s own continued growth. We’re not the only ones to realize the overall trend for NPs, however. State legislatures from coast to coast are taking a …

Sometimes it may seem to patients like it would take an act of Congress for them to obtain their own health records. They might literally get that if new rules proposed by federal health regulators are adopted. Among the issues the draft covers are technology standards meant to unlock digital data in EHRs. One part of the proposal, for example, would empower patients to access all their health information electronically—including the provider’s notes, hospital records, …

Many medical organizations, insurers, and state legislatures have responded to the ongoing opioid crisis by limiting the number of doses prescribed for acute pain at any one time. The bill just passed by the U.S. Senate, however, puts no limits on first-time prescriptions for opiates. That’s in contrast to earlier versions of the bill, which did seek to impose hard limits on opioid prescriptions. The American Medical Association, among other stakeholders, objected to the idea …

Fresh off a successful effort to stop a Massachusetts bill that would have imposed a tax on all urgent care charges, the North East Regional Urgent Care Association (NERUCA) is calling on urgent care providers, operators, and industry advocates to make their voices heard to fight a similarly onerous proposed bill in New Jersey. If passed by state legislators, Assembly Bill A4443 would, NERUCA warns, require annual licensure of urgent care centers; exclude urgent care …