Practice Management
While the world’s attention has been focused on COVID-19, another mysterious virus has continued to wreak havoc on the families it affects. Acute flaccid myelitis, which has been afflicting a growing number of children for several years, has continued to strike seemingly out of the blue. While care for children diagnosed with AFM is clearly beyond the resources of an urgent care center, parents could easily present to urgent care when symptoms first start to …
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Data from a new study by UnitedHealth Group show that urgent care centers could be providing care for millions of American children who have limited access to well-child visits. Looking at the care of plan members between the ages of 3 and 18 in West Virginia, they found that only one out of three children received an annual well-child visit—with the shortfall being especially dramatic among Medicaid-covered families, children of color, and in rural areas. …
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Readers of JUCM News may recall that, for the most part, patients have been putting off annual physicals, follow-up exams for chronic conditions, and well-child visits since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the U.S. However, new data from the CDC show that too many patients also avoided care for immediate needs. Over a 10-week period at the start of various state stay-at-home recommendations, 20% fewer patients sought care for what ended up being heart …
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A patient presents to your urgent care center with palpitations and neck pain radiating to her jaw. She also has a painful, enlarged thyroid on palpation. Concerns for heart attack and malignancy were ultimately ruled out upon further evaluation in this real-world case published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The patient, who it was later learned had recently recovered from COVID-19, was found to have subacute thyroiditis (SAT), presumed to have stemmed …
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Several drugs (and even, dangerously, household cleaning products) have been put forth as possible preventive or curative agents for COVID-19. They’ve all been discredited for that purpose, ultimately, so far. Now, however, researchers in the UK are suggesting that a commonly used glucocorticosteroid may hold some promise. As part of the Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy (RECOVERY) trial, dexamethasone was shown to reduce death from COVID-19 by one third in ventilated patients and by one …
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Workplaces across the country are starting to take steps toward normalcy, with restaurants in many states letting patrons back in or offering outdoor dining options. Retail and office jobs will follow. That doesn’t mean folks feel safe going back after months of working remotely, however, or that precautions shouldn’t be taken to prevent a second wave of COVID-19 infections. Pennsylvania-based St. Luke’s Occupational Medicine, in collaboration with St. Luke’s Behavioral Health, St. Luke’s Fitness Centers, …
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The Urgent Care Association’s weekly snapshot of how urgent care operators are faring during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that telemedicine is continuing to contribute to both patient care and related revenues. This week’s data show that 87% of responding urgent care centers are offering telemedicine through their locations; the remaining 13% have no plans to add it right now, however. The good news for those who have taken the leap is that most are being …
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U.S. poison control centers have seen calls related to cleaning products and disinfectants jump 20% in the first quarter of 2020 compared with 2019, according to data posted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly two-thirds of exposures have been related to bleach, while hand sanitizers and nonalcoholic disinfectants are each at the root of roughly one-third of the calls, each. (The data could reflect exposure to multiple chemicals for any one event.) …
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As we’ve told you, many patients concerned about exposing themselves to others who may have contracted COVID-19 have steered clear of healthcare facilities for acute but minor complaints, and certainly for preventive health visits. At some point that practice will exact a toll on our collective health, however. An urgent care provider at Upper Valley Urgent Care in El Paso, TX told television station KFOX-14 exactly that recently, at the same time sharing a valuable …
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When COVID-19 first came to widespread attention, it appeared that the virus was not high-risk for children compared with (especially older) adults. While that may be true in the strictest sense, as more cases have come to light and been the subject of scrutiny it’s become clear that the associated novel multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) can have a severe impact on children. Now the journal Gastroenterology has published data revealing that gastrointestinal signs …
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