Practice Management
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Salmonella outbreaks in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio could have all been caused by precut melons purchased at Costco, Kroger, Walmart and Whole Foods. Taking a step back along the supply chain, the CDC conjectures they could have all come from a Caito Food facility in Indiana. Caito has issued a recall notice for Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. The Food and …
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They say it’s never a bad time for a good idea. And right now, opening a new urgent care center is a very good idea—and you can discover why, and how to move forward, by attending the next webinar hosted by the Urgent Care Association on Thursday, June 14, from 1 to 2 pm, Central. In Now is a Great Time to Open a New Urgent Care, speaker David Stern, MD will walk attendees through …
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JUCM, The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine has led the way in bringing original, peer-reviewed clinical and practice management content to the urgent care industry since 2006. Now the best has gotten even better by redesigning its website to offer better mobile access, easier navigation and search functions, and the ability to download every print issue ever published in its history. In addition to its award-winning print issues, JUCM will continue to offer web-exclusive content, …
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As the weather turns warmer and schools start letting out, urgent care centers can expect to see more patients presenting with certain illness and injuries—some of which can be deadly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just issued a report noting there were 493 outbreaks of waterborne diseases—many of them related to recreational waters—between 2000 and 2014, including 27,219 illnesses and eight fatalities. Up to a third of the outbreaks could be traced back …
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ChoiceOne/MedSpring, operators of more than 60 urgent care centers around the country, and life sciences company Quadrant Biosciences have entered a partnership to offer a new brain health assessment service at existing locations in Maryland and Texas. Called ClearEdge, the system was developed with experts at SUNY Upstate Medical University. It essentially packages together an array of functional assessments designed to monitor and track subtle changes in cognitive function, balance, and patient symptoms over time. …
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Blue Cross and Blue Shield says thousands of physicians continually break evolving North Carolina laws regarding prescriptions for opiates—but acknowledges the difficulties both of keeping track of those laws on the physicians’ part and enforcing them on the state’s part. The challenge may be especially great in regard to the NC STOP Act, which limits opioid prescriptions to 5 days for first-time patients with short-term pain (or 7 days if the patient had surgery). The …
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Long hours, an overabundance of bureaucratic tasks, and perceived lack of respect from coworkers and administrators are the perfect recipe for physician burnout, if Medscape’s 2018 Physician Burnout and Depression Report is to be believed. Another source cited—increasing reliance on electronic health records—may also be the gateway to reducing the risk for burnout, however, according to a new article published online by Advisory Board. The difference between an EHR’s potential to be a burden or …
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Concerns over the lifetime consequences of head injuries have led to countless protocols and regulations for athletes and victims of accidents or falls. Advances are being made on the clinical front, too—some of which may light the way for urgent care to play a bigger role. First, a study just published in JAMA Network Open suggests that patients who presented to emergency rooms with what was ultimately found to be mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) …
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CVS Health is one of the defendants in a federal lawsuit claiming that it and other companies failed to protect the HIV status of 6,000 patients in Ohio—not through an online data breach, but thanks to a poorly constructed envelope. The suit filed by three unidentified plaintiffs maintains that when CVS mailed letters to patients in the state’s HIV drug assistance program last year, the recipients’ HIV status was visible in the envelope’s glassine window. …
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Urgent care providers have become more attuned to signs of potential child abuse, realizing that the parents responsible might be nervous taking a child they’ve injured to their “regular” pediatrician. Visiting an urgent care center where the family may not be known can provide a false sense of security that the true nature of a child’s injuries would go unrecognized. There’s tons of information telling providers what to do about those suspicions, as well. We …
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