Practice Management
Recent reports concerning blood clots in six women who received the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine have moved the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration to recommend a “pause” in administering that vaccine. The news garnered headlines and “breaking news” bulletins among the mainstream media and lit up social media chats. As such, it’s likely that some patients will present with concerns that having received a COVID-19 vaccine somehow …
Read More
An urgent care network in South Carolina is learning the hard way that failing to maintain and submit accurate medical claims can lead to disastrous outcomes for the operator. The Justice Department just announced that the company in question will have to pay $22.5 million to resolve charges that it violated the False Claims Act. The state’s case rests on accusations that between 2013 and 2018 there were numerous instances in which the company billed …
Read More
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added several new chronic conditions to the list of those thought to predispose people with COVID-19 to severe illness. Several—type 1 diabetes, moderate-to-severe asthma, liver disease, dementia or other neurological conditions, stroke/cerebrovascular disease, HIV infection, cystic fibrosis, and overweight—were previously considered those that “might” put patients at higher risk. Substance use disorders, which hadn’t been considered to put people at higher risk at all, are now also considered …
Read More
Whether or not you’ve participated in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ program to cover the cost of administering COVID-19 tests to uninsured patients to date, take note that HHS is extending the program to include vaccination. The agency is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, April 13 at 2 pm, Eastern to explain the steps for using the program, including how to enroll as a provider participant, check patient eligibility, submit patient information …
Read More
If you’re among the many urgent care providers who encourage patients to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or try to educate patients who have concerns about the shot, those efforts seem to be making a dent in people’s attitudes. The percentage of Americans who have either gotten at least one dose of the vaccine or who now plan to is growing, according to new data released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The biggest jump was seen …
Read More
Many substances purported to help boost workouts by giving the user more energy or helping to speed development of muscle mass have been the subject of warnings or outright bans by health departments at the state and federal levels in the United States. That doesn’t mean they’re not available, however, as underscored in a study published recently in Clinical Toxicology. The authors found that 17 brands of over-the-country supplements available online in the U.S. contained …
Read More
People are sick of wearing masks, wiping down their grocery carts, and sanitizing their hands every time they even think of touching a doorknob—so much so that there’s widespread rebellion against what we’ve come to view as basic hygiene practices in the time of COVID-19. We see evidence of this on the nightly news and social media throughout the day. What if we eased the “rules” a little, though—not because we’re bowing to people’s impatience …
Read More
The past year has brought nonstop changes in how Americans live their daily lives. What used to be typical behavior became foolhardy. People stopped going to doctors for nonemergent complaints to a large extent, with urgent care suffering downturns in patient volume (temporarily, though some practices are still trying to catch up). Bearing that in mind, the Urgent Care Association, of which JUCM is the official publication, in the interest of full disclosure, has adapted …
Read More
As of this writing, nearly 17% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. Millions more have received at least one of the two doses they’ll need for full protection or are waiting for full protection to “kick in.” All told at this point, roughly 150 million Americans have some degree of protection. There are probably nearly that many who have a lot of questions about what they should or shouldn’t …
Read More
What on the surface could appear to be good news may actually be obscuring a clearer picture of how the pandemic is affecting children in an unexpected way. Reports of suspected child abuse have dropped—dramatically—over the past year or so, according to an article from the Associated Press. At the same time, however, the AP’s review of records in Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas indicate that child deaths due to suspected maltreatment …
Read More