Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

New COVID-19 Testing Platforms Are on the Way. Now if We Can Only Improve Reporting…

Shortfalls in testing supplies—especially in urgent care centers—was a serious problem at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Anecdotal evidence suggests that one reason the virus spread so widely and quickly was that asymptomatic patients who didn’t know they were sick (and infectious) went about their business instead of quarantining. Supply chain issues have, largely, been ironed out so there’s no shortage of places to get tested. However, an article published …

You Knew It All Along, but Now There’s Proof—Delaying Care May Be Riskier Than COVID-19

PowerPoint Presentation Urgent care professionals recognized early on that patients were not seeking care for complaints they would have presented with before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now there are data backing up that belief. According to information gathered by the consulting firm Advisory Board, total urgent care center volumes dropped 50% in the spring. As you know, they’ve come back strong since then, although Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles reports that its urgent care locations are still …

From Brick-and-Mortar to Highways and Byways: Taking COVID-19 Testing on the Road

PowerPoint Presentation As the incidence of COVID-19 continues to creep up around the country, it wouldn’t be surprising if we see fear of visiting healthcare facilities return among the public. Given that testing for the virus is essential to minimizing its spread, that could spell trouble on the same level as we experienced last spring. Some urgent care centers have taken to establishing temporary testing sites in retail parking lots. Some, like American Family Care …

Be Aware: Just Because a Patient is ‘Over’ COVID-19 Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Still Suffering

PowerPoint Presentation “Two weeks” has come to be viewed as some kind of magic number for resolution of COVID-19 symptoms and risk for transmitting the virus to close contacts. That may be shortsighted for at least some patients, however. Something called post COVID-19 syndrome has been identified by physicians at the Mayo Clinic after recognizing that some patients continue to experience intense fatigue, headaches, and difficulty concentrating for weeks—or even months—after they’re deemed to be …

Retailer Efforts to Grab COVID-19 Test Customers Face Steep Obstacles—Such as Immediacy

Many retail outlets are trying desperately to capture revenue from the seemingly endless need for COVID-19 testing facilities. Some, such as national drugstore chains, are doing so successfully. Others face steep obstacles, however. Costco, for one, has tried hard to make it convenient for customers to self-test for the virus by offering a home version. The first challenge they encountered was the fact that many people who get a COVID-19 test are doing so to …

Seniors Have Been Especially Fearful of ED Visits During the Pandemic. Promote Your Practice Accordingly

There’s been much discussion, including public service announcements from the Surgeon General of the United States, of the need to maintain visits for ongoing and acute healthcare concerns in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic. As urgent care operators know, however, patients have stayed away in droves (especially in the early days of the crisis). What may come as news is the fact that patients 65 years of age and over have been most hesitant, especially …

Available Guidelines Are All You Need to Improve Antibiotic Stewardship—and Save Lives

Suggestions that urgent care was any more responsible for overuse of antibiotics—and subsequent drug resistance—than other practice settings were largely blown out of proportion. For one thing, patients self-select urgent care over other settings when it seems evident that an antibiotic is needed, so it’s likely that urgent care providers see more patients who really do need a prescription. Clearly there are instances where one is given even though it’s not indicated, as well. As …

Arrival of the COVID-19 Vaccine Could Influence the State of Urgent Care and Retail Clinics for Years to Come

When tests for COVID-19 first became available, there was no place at the table for urgent care. Supplies were allocated elsewhere, while simultaneously patients were afraid of visiting urgent care center locations, lest they raise their risk of getting sick (a largely unfounded fear). The drop in patient visits and revenue has been well documented. Now as talk of the arrival of one or more vaccines against the virus heats up, there’s concern in some …

‘MIS’—It’s Not Just for Kids Anymore

Having been lulled into a fall sense of safety when it came to children and COVID-19, it came as a shock to the general public when word started to spread about multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). It’s probably less shocking, but perhaps just as frightening, then, to learn that MIS appears to strike adults with the virus. The concern about this revelation—besides caring for the individual patient who’s affected—is that this has occurred under …

Adopting Telemedicine? Be Mindful of the Potential for Fraud—and Consequent Penalties

As happens often with advances in the way medicine is practiced—and billed for—telemedicine has now reached a level of acceptance sufficient for widespread fraud to become an issue. The U.S. Department of Justice has levied charges of fraud totaling more than $6 billion against 345 people in 51 federal districts, with $4.5 billion of that sum connected to telemedicine billing. It’s the DOJ’s biggest fraud roundup ever. Those charged in the telemedicine sweep 86 defendants, …