Practice Management
Fear of COVID-19 and confusion over the capabilities of urgent care centers are still combining to lead some patients to make poor decisions over where they seek care, and just what level of care they really need. Evidence of this is clear in a report aired recently by KRGV television in the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas. A woman there woke up one morning achy and having a hard time breathing. She felt more …
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While various states are easing restrictions devised to help curb the spread of COVID-19, Texas has taken the most dramatic step by dropping its mask mandate altogether. This coincides with new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in MMWR, indicating that requiring people to wear masks in public places like retail establishments and restaurants helped reduce both the incidence of infection and deaths attributed to the virus. Between March 1 and …
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Even though the increasing number of approved vaccines is grabbing the headlines these days, the hard truth is that millions of Americans continue to become infected with the COVID-19 virus. An unacceptably high number of those patients require a stay in the hospital, where the risk of mortality is still relatively high compared with patients who do not need to be admitted. Thankfully, new research continues to shed light on which patients are at the …
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With more American receiving the COVID-19 vaccine every day, confusion is bubbling up over what “safe behavior” means post-shot. Are masks still advised? What about social distancing and quarantine procedures? Recognizing the potential for misinformation to cause a setback in our fight against the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidance on appropriate safety standards for people who have been vaccinated and those around them. Among the highlights are the revelation …
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Television station WRIC in Virginia ran a story recently about a woman who visited a local urgent care center as well as the emergency room after awaking one morning with eye pain and vision disturbances (including total vision loss in one eye). Various providers in both settings were stumped after ruling out conditions ranging from severe conjunctivitis to an unknown foreign body. After weeks of running from one doctor to the next, an optometrist suggested …
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Utah state legislators just voted to expand physician assistants’ ability to practice without physician supervision. North Dakota did the same 2 years ago. While that’s clearly a nod to advanced practice providers’ essential role in administering healthcare, as well as a concession to the downturn in physicians choosing to practice primary care, there are concerns among some in the urgent care community that the trend toward recognizing care provided PAs and nurse practitioners on the …
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Every year at this time, much of the country starts to shake off the winter doldrums. The days are longer, the temperature starts creeping up, and there’s a sense of renewal. People just can’t wait to say goodbye to winter and to being stuck inside. This year, of course, that urge may be particularly strong. The fatigue of social distancing restrictions that have kept us from even the lower intensity interactions could be a serious …
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Whether it’s sensible or not, given that it would be generous to call distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine “clunky” up to this point, some large scale testing sites and public health centers are starting to shift their emphasis to immunization. In Florida, for example, the testing site located in a football stadium relocated to a much smaller mall space—with a vaccination operation moving from that mall to the stadium. So where are all the people …
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As of this writing, more than 57 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been distributed across the United States. Roughly 16 million people have been vaccinated, with many more to follow. Unfortunately, around one-third of Americans don’t plan to be among them, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the assumption that vaccination providers will come to include more urgent care centers, it’s essential that you have solid information to …
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There’s been a lot of promising news regarding the COVID-19 pandemic recently; cases in most areas of the U.S. are trending downward while testing and vaccination programs are (slowly) helping to curb public anxiety about the virus. This is no time for hubris or a false sense of security, however, as an article just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals newly identified characteristics of children who become ill with multisystem inflammatory …
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