Practice Management
ZOOM+Care and Aetna are going to collaborate on an accountable care initiative in three Oregon counties, with the stated aim of cutting healthcare costs by up to 15% for employers in the Portland area. Offerings under the Aetna Whole Health ─ ZOOM+Care plan will be available starting July 1, though Aetna sales reps are quoting plans to local insurance producers as we speak. The partners plan to enable patients to use mobile phones to schedule …
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On-demand care is no longer limited to urgent care and the emergency room. Retail clinics and telemedicine give healthcare consumers more choices than ever before. That’s done nothing to impede the growth of urgent care, however. The latest annual Benchmarking Report from the Urgent Care Association (formerly the Urgent Care Association of America) and Merchant Medicine shows that urgent care operators continue to see consistent, year-over-year growth in spite of the increased competition. That goes …
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As noted in the latest benchmarking data on the urgent care industry, the very nature of on-demand care has changed since the birth of the Urgent Care Association of America. To demonstrate that this is not a time for “business as usual,” UCAOA announced at its recent annual convention in Las Vegas that it’s changing its name to the Urgent Care Association (UCA) and expanding its offerings to include new providers and technologies that are …
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Wahidullah Medical Corporation, which does business as Redwood Urgent Care and Laboratory, has filed an antitrust suit against St. Joseph Health, alleging that the system has an “entrenched monopoly” that it leverages to prohibit patients from using nonaffiliated lab services. Besides damaging Redwood’s business, the suit claims that St. Joseph’s tactics allow them to charge exorbitant prices that cost patients and insurers more than they’d be paying otherwise. Redwood alleges that St. Joseph Health prevents …
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Children wind up in the urgent care center when they’re not at their best—sickly, often cranky, and not necessarily in the most compliant frame of mind. And that’s “typical” kids. The challenges can increase exponentially for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). How staff and clinicians deal with the patient and family in the urgent care center or emergency room can make all the difference in the world, though, facilitating a better clinical experience and …
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The fact that reimbursement rates decline while the cost of running a practice goes up is hardly a news flash. Relatively minor details in reimbursement contracts that can ultimately add up to big bucks should not go unnoticed amid all the macrodata, however, according to a recent post on Doctor Discourse. Many changes that may seem to be random moves that your staff just has to get used to may also bring new opportunities to …
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No sooner do we close the books on one of the worst flu seasons in recent history than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us to expect a high volume of tick-, mosquito-, and flea-borne infections as the weather warms up. It’s not just greater numbers of the same diagnoses, either; new tickborne diseases like Heartland virus are showing up in the continental U.S. Tickborne diseases are climbing most in the Northeast, Upper …
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With patients having more choices of healthcare providers—and settings—than ever before, understanding what drives them to a given location can mean the difference between success and going out of business. In fact, one out of five patient participants in Vitals’ ninth annual Physician Wait Time Report say they’ve switched physicians specifically because of long wait times. Even more (30%) have walked out on an appointment because they were made to wait too long. The cost …
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CityMD will pay a $6.6 million settlement over a variety of charges related to treating Medicare patients at its 96 urgent care centers. The U.S. Department of Justice claims the company billed Medicare for services by physicians who did not actually provide them, and charged for more complex procedures than were actually performed or that were unsupported by the documentation provided. By doing so, CityMD received higher reimbursements than it would have if it billed …
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A Detroit-area physician is among the clinicians indicted in an alleged scheme to overprescribe numerous commonly abused drugs. Asm Akter Ahmed, MD has already been stripped of his license to practice medicine based on charges that he wrote prescriptions destined for four co-conspiring pharmacists, who then fraudulently billed Medicare, Medicaid, and Blue Cross Blue Shield for the medications—some of which were never even dispensed. The estimated cost of the operation, which ran from 2011 through …
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