Practice Management
We’ve heard anecdotally that some urgent care operations are experiencing serious shortfalls in patient volume, while others are “all hands on deck” in dealing with patients who have, or are concerned they have, COVID-19. To get a better handle on how the industry as a whole is faring, the Urgent Care Association started surveying members on a weekly basis. In the initial iteration, 82% of respondents reported that all their centers were open while 18% …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a new advisory clarifying steps that should be taken to decrease risk of COVID-19 infection in critical infrastructure workers—while also reconfirming that those workers “be permitted to continue work following potential exposure to COVID-19, provided they remain asymptomatic and additional precautions are implemented to protect them and the community. Interim Guidance for Implementing Safety Practices for Critical Infrastructure Workers Who May Have Had Exposure to a …
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Every night at 7 pm in some cities, residents come out on their front stoops or hang out their windows to cheer, clap, and bang pots and pans together in a show of appreciation for frontline healthcare workers and first responders. Northwell Health-GoHealth Urgent Care may be going them one better by giving those workers priority access to care at 52 urgent care centers in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County, NY during …
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After an outright cure for or a vaccine to prevent COVID-19, the Holy Grail of the pandemic is a reliable method of testing patients who may have been infected. A new study out of the University of Insubria, Varese, Italy shows that testing saliva could be as reliable as anything else. Researchers got positive tests from their first salivary swab in all 25 patients who took part. Interestingly, two of those patients had negative pharyngeal …
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Even urgent care providers who have not been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus are feeling the ill effects of the pandemic. According to a new article in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (subscription required), clinicians who are working longer-than-usual shifts or working shifts out of their normal routine (such as filling in on an overnight emergency room shift or taking on 12-hour telemedicine stretches) are more prone to poor or insufficient sleep and increased …
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We’ve all been operating under the guidance that 6 feet could be considered relatively “safe” distancing between individuals in order to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, new data from Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan, China indicate that the transmission distance might be twice that or more—at least 4 meters, or 13.1 feet-plus according to a study of air samples there. The researchers based their findings on swab samples from the intensive care unit …
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In spite of a nearly constant flow of information from mainstream media, federal officials, and local health departments, some individuals continue to dismiss the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic because “more people die of the flu every year.” Unfortunately, that belief is starting to be disproven in some parts of the U.S. Indiana, for one, confirmed that its death rate due to COVID-19 in just a 4-week period exceeded the state’s 5-year average for annual …
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In line with recent efforts by retail drugstores to bulk up primary care-type offerings, Walgreens plans to open 15 drive-thru COVID-19 testing locations in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas. The company says it chose locations after consulting with the Department of Health and Human Services on areas where the virus is on the rise. The move comes weeks after Walgreens, CVS Health, Target, and Walmart joined President Trump to discuss how retailers …
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The Urgent Care Association may have been forced to cancel its annual convention due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has repurposed the time and energy that would have gone in that direction to produce a range of support materials for its constituency. On the business side, UCA asked its policy consultant, Camille Bonta, MHS to share a summary of recent legislation and regulatory changes that could be helpful to urgent care centers; Staying Afloat …
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The challenge of keeping patients who could be highly contagious with a potentially deadly infection out of your facility, while still providing care for them is one of the greatest challenges facing many urgent care facilities during the COVID-19 crisis. Some who never saw the utility of telehealth are now using it as a screening tool, however. One Chicago-based ER doc who is also heavily involved in urgent care has pulled several 12-hour telehealth shifts …
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