Practice Management
For urgent care operators who offer occupational medicine services, the value of those services is self-evident. Likewise, businesses that already count themselves as occ med clients are likely to recognize the benefits for their employees and their own operations. So, where’s the disconnect for those businesses who “don’t need” an occ med provider? The answer may be that they simply don’t get it, if an article posted recently by Personnel Today is any indication. “Many …
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Telemedicine is a hot topic in urgent care circles these days. Some industry leaders herald it as a new way to reach patients and to extend an operation’s reach; skeptics express concern that it’s an obstacle to building a healthy provider–patient relationship and that it facilitates overprescribing. While some of this boils down to a difference of opinion, evidence is mounting that both arguments have merit. A new study out of the University of Pittsburgh …
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The latest version of the International Classification of Diseases from the World Health Organization has a startling new entry: for the first time, it officially classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon. Previous editions have referred to burnout as a “state of vital exhaustion” but stopped short of linking it to the workplace. Now the WHO describes burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed,” including the …
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A pair of data breaches at two lab test companies exposed information relating to more than 19 million consumers this week. First, Quest Diagnostics admitted it experienced a breach that exposed 12 million patients’ information; a day later, LabCorp revealed a breach affecting 7.7 million people. In the latter case, the company said the breach occurred at a third-party collections firm called American Medical Collections Agency (AMCA) between August 1, 2018 and March 30, 2019. …
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JUCM readers know urgent care is a frequent destination for patients who’ve experienced a blow to the head that could have caused mild traumatic brain injury—with children being brought in by parents of particular concern. The operators of Westex Urgent Care in Texas not only recognized that, as well, but have mobilized their resources to get on the prevention side. Westex recently took part in a Texas Medical Association initiative to provide bicycle helmets, free …
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Some “experts” in both the insurance and healthcare industries may have been skeptical when UnitedHealth Group’s Optima division bought MedExpress a few years ago. Others predicted that the insurance giant would likely look for ways to deliver deeper healthcare services to their own plan members. They were right. MedExpress is now the largest urgent care chain in the country. UHG expects even bigger things to come, however—projecting that MedExpress will help push its OptumCare medical …
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More than a quarter (26%) of Americans who live in rural areas have not been able to get healthcare when they needed it at some point in recent years, according to new research National Public Radio conducted with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This in spite of the fact that 87% have one form of health insurance or another. The reason? Rural hospitals, which many rural …
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Oncology itself has largely shifted to ambulatory settings—simultaneously increasing the volume of same-day urgent visits for treatment-related side effects, according to a new article in HemOnc Today. Utilizing the skills of nurse practitioners and physician assistants (known collectively as advanced-practice providers, or APPs) has been shown to keep costs down while also allowing greater, faster access for patients with cancer by giving them another option besides the ED—just as urgent care does for all manner …
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Weekend hikers will soon be joined on the trail by vacationing families and campers—upping the potential for tick bites and associated disease exponentially as the warm weather weeks wear on. Unfortunately, if recent years are any indication, we can expect to see more cases of tick-borne disease than ever; they’ve risen steadily over the past several years. Notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a marked increase in spotted fever rickettsiosis, which …
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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will start loosening the rules around allowing individuals covered by VA health plans to visit urgent care centers next week—fittingly enough on June 6, the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The move marks the latest step in the evolution of the Veterans Choice Act, which was adopted 5 years ago in response to complaints that veterans were not able to get timely appointments at VA hospitals. At the time, there …
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