Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Don’t Blame Doctors for Driving Up Healthcare Costs

Patients may sometimes be inclined to look at a medical bill and envision their doctor sliding behind the wheel of their brand-new Bentley at the end of a shift. We know that’s not exactly how it works, but now a new study in Health Affairs presents an academic approach to quantifying that fact. It suggests the growth in private insurance costs lies more with hospital prices than it does the cost of the physician’s time. …

How to Ratchet Down Volatile Situations in the Urgent Care Center

Some 25% of nurses have reported being assaulted by a patient or a patient’s family member while on the job, according to a study published in the American Journal of Nursing. Risk is greatest in the emergency, geriatric, and psychiatric settings—all of which overlap with the urgent care patient population. Now The Joint Commission has issued a report that offers advice on de-escalating tense situations that could turn violent in a flash. Quick Safety, Issue …

Concussion in an Adolescent Athlete? Get ‘Em Moving!

Many parents opt to bring young athletes who’ve taken a blow to the head to an urgent care center instead of the emergency room or the pediatrician, especially if they’re concerned about excessive waits. As such, you should be aware of a new study out of the University of Buffalo that suggests a supervised aerobic exercise regimen spurs faster recovery in adolescents who’ve sustained a concussion while playing a sport. Researchers followed 103 subjects between …

Remember: ADA Rules Apply to Employees, Not Just Patient Accessibility

Urgent care centers as a whole go to great lengths to ensure their locations and facilities are accessible to all patients, regardless of any special needs they may have. It can be easy to overlook the employers’ responsibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to also provide accommodations that allow employees to do their jobs. One need look no further than a lawsuit in Virginia to be reminded, however. The case of a healthcare …

Weighing the Quality—and Value—of Primary Care

Americans who receive primary care get significantly more high-value care, with better healthcare access and overall experience, than patients without primary care, according to a new study publised online by the Journal of the American Medical Association. For purposes of the study, primary care was defined as the provider “you usually go if you are sick or need advice about your health,” not including the emergency room. The researchers considered 39 clinical quality measures and …

Urgent Care Center Is Unwittingly—and Innocently—at the Center of Insurance Fraud Case

In October, we shared the story of of a white mother who said an urgent care center refused to believe the little black girl with her was her daughter, despite her insistence that she had in fact adopted the girl; consequently, the girl was refused care and the urgent care center received a ton of negative attention. Now another urgent care center has been caught up in case on the flipside—treating a child who was …

Even with the Best Intentions, Whistleblowing is Grueling for All Concerned

Are whistleblowers bottom feeders who betray their employers to make a buck, or crusaders for the public good, responsible for bringing to light corporate or government malfeasance? Whichever your answer, the fact is that whistleblower lawsuits, to which urgent care operations are clearly not immune, take a massive toll on both the whistleblower/complainant and the defendant in the suit. The majority of cases involve healthcare, with Medicare fraud being an especially rich field (probably not …

New VA Regs Would Allow Millions of Vets to Choose Urgent Care

As many as 2.1 million United States veterans will be able drop into any approved urgent care center that’s convenient to them whenever they need to, without prior authorization, under new regulations proposed by the Department of Veterans Affairs this week. The option to see private physicians, including urgent care providers, would apply to any vets who would have to wait more than 20 days or who would have to drive 30 minutes or more …

Study Spotlights Huge Disparity in Cost Between Freestanding EDs and Urgent Care

Urgent care veterans, insurers, and certainly any patient who has ever visited both have been saying this for a long time, but a new study out of Vanderbilt University Medical Center confirms that freestanding emergency rooms are likely to charge more (sometimes a lot more) than urgent care centers for the same services. The study, newly published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine, uncovered certain cost characteristics of freestanding EDs that had been converted from …

Study: Antibiotic Stewardship Means Probing When Patients Say They’re Allergic to Penicillin

Some 10% of patients will tell you they’re allergic to penicillin if the subject comes up, so you’d better give them something else if that’s what’s indicated for their diagnosis. The problem is, even those who believe what they’re saying are likely to be mistaken. As noted in an article just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, less than 5% of the U.S. population actually has an allergy to penicillin. In this …