Practice Management
We’ve seen pediatric urgent care take root. Orthopedic-oriented urgent care centers continue to flourish. Now the Orthopaedic Institute for Children (OIC) expects a combination of the two will offer patients the best of both worlds, and is set to start construction in Los Angeles on a new pediatric orthopedic urgent care center that will more than double the size of the current ortho trauma wing. In addition to projecting the facility will help OIC keep …
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Residents who call 911 for immediate medical care could find themselves getting a lift from a rideshare to a local urgent care center instead of riding in an ambulance, sirens wailing, to the emergency room thanks to a pilot program Las Vegas Fire launched in Las Vegas. With more than two thirds of its roughly 600,000 annual calls being for medical assistance, the fire department was looking for ways to cut costs but not the …
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Code 3 Emergency Partners is betting that an enclosed location where 65,000 people work and 65 million people pass through every year is probably a good place to set up an urgent care clinic. So they did, at D/FW International Airport in Dallas/Fort Worth. The clinic has the same capability to treat infections and lacerations, to take x-rays, and run ultrasounds as any other urgent care center—and a constant stream of passersby and workers who …
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Providence Health System wants to replace its 408-bed hospital in Washington, DC with a “health village” that will include urgent care and primary care facilities, a telehealth operation, and expanded post-acute care services. They also plan to include recreation space, such as walking trails, on the 30-acre property. Providence says there are simply too many hospital beds in its market, and that the health village concept is one that will better serve the surrounding community. …
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Urgent care operators have been making a splash by revamping existing retail spaces and restaurants into urgent care centers. Now hospital systems seeking to make inroads in the industry are doing the same. Around Indiana, for example, Indiana University Health is opening up centers in old bank branches; Community Health Network is setting up shop in a strip mall; and Franciscan ExpressCare is actually clearing some space for a clinic in an apartment-and-retail complex, hoping …
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Wellmont Health System is taking a hard look at how it can integrate services among its urgent care centers and hospital facilities. The company has announced a goal of having an urgent care center within 30 minutes of every patient in its region. It’s noteworthy that Wellmont views distance between the urgent care center and the patient (and not the nearest hospital) to be of key importance. Given the trend toward viewing urgent care centers …
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FastMed Urgent Care has made an ambitious, intercontinental leap by opening its first urgent care location in China—the first such move by any U.S.-based urgent care operator. Sami Elbadramany, executive vice president of FastMed, says the company is betting that China’s efforts to transform its healthcare system by providing broader access to more of its citizens will dovetail nicely with the urgent care model. Its first location sits in the Pudong New District in Shanghai, …
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Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore has added its voice to the chorus decrying excessive costs for patients visiting hospital emergency rooms for episodic care. What’s more, new data it just revealed indicates the odds of getting overcharged are greater if you’re a minority or uninsured. Researchers considered the billing records for more than 12,000 U.S. hospital-based emergency physicians, finding that on average adult patients in the ED are charged 340% more than what Medicare allows …
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The practice of physicians dismissing patients from their care seems to be on the uptick in recent years, according to a new report in JAMA Internal Medicine. Roughly 90% of the 794 practices that were part of the study have “fired” patients in the past 2 years—with 8% saying they’ve terminated relationships with ≥51 patients in that time. The greatest portion of participants (67%) has let up to 20 patients go. Only 10% have not …
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While family physicians remain the most commonly sought clinicians among recruiters, urgent care physicians jumped from 20th just 2 years ago to 12th in Merritt Hawkins’ 2017 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives. Given that primary care physicians are the backbone of the urgent care provider workforce, it’s expected that recruitment and retention will continue to be increasingly competitive. More and more, top employee physicians (as opposed to owner/operator physicians) are being courted …
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