Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

California Takes Sutter Health to Court Over Healthcare Costs

Sutter Health, which counts 32 urgent care clinics, 24 hospitals, and 35 surgery centers among its vast holdings, is the target of a lawsuit from the California attorney general, charging that it engages in anticompetitive practices that drive up prices for consumers and insurers. The suit is also viewed as an indictment of industry consolidation, which is resulting in fewer entities and less competition. While it has declined to comment on the suit specifically, Sutter …

Is it Time to Retire the Pain Scale?

Depending on who you listen to, responsibility for the opioid crisis in the United States lies with “Big Pharma,” physicians, patients, insurance companies…all of which is true to some extent. It’s a complex problem borne out of a legitimate need to help ease the pain of patients who are suffering. However, a new KevinMD blog post suggests that removing a very noncomplex tool—the pain scale—from patient interactions may be a big step in rebooting how …

‘mHealth’ May Simplify (and Improve) Patient Follow-Up

Patients visit your urgent care center because they know they can get excellent care without waiting days for an appointment or languishing for hours in the waiting room. So why do so many seem to disregard your advice for postdischarge care or follow-up just as promptly? Before you shrug and file that in the “just one of those things” folder, bear in mind that your helping them to follow through may cement their positive experience …

New Data Highlight Where Clinicians Can Focus on Controllable Risk Factors

Data published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association point to a need for all clinicians to focus on controllable risk factors for disease and mortality. For urgent care clinicians, that may mean being assertive in probing for patient habits that could be contributing factors related to their presenting to you on a given day. The article points out wide differences in the burden of disease from state to state, attributed to key …

Tread Lightly When Commenting on Other Clinicians’ Capabilities—or Face the Consequences

Honest, respectful feedback can spur subordinates, superiors, and coworkers to do their best work. Comments that could be perceived as overly critical or, especially, bullying are both divisive and potentially harmful to all parties concerned, however. A recent blog post on the website DoctorDiscourse illustrates this in painful detail. It recounts how three physicians at three unrelated facilities lost their jobs or believe they were “blackballed” for seeming to discount the contributions or capabilities of …

Beware: Opiate Prescriptions Are Under Extra Scrutiny

No-see opiate prescriptions have cost an urgent care physician in Burlington County, NJ his medical license—which he willfully surrendered in order to avoid paying penalties and fees totaling over $127,000. The state had already suspended his license temporarily after accusing him of prescribing narcotic pain medications to patients he didn’t examine over a 5-year period. If he violates the consent order he agreed to, he will have to pay the money immediately and face additional …

This Bot’s for You, Aurora Health Care

Milwaukee-based Aurora Health Care may soon start offering a new digital concierge that allows patients to enter their symptoms on a computer or mobile device and receive real-time advice on what the most appropriate care site might be. The chatbot, called Bouy, appears in a web browser, understands “natural language,” and adapts to the user’s answers. It operates, essentially, like an electronic decision tree by asking the user a series of questions aimed at directing …

Another Urgent Care Operation Goes Mobile

It may be premature to call it a trend, but stories of urgent care operators taking their services directly to patients continue to pop up around the country. It’s becoming a more appealing prospect to payers, too. Most recently, Mercy Care Plan granted its members access to DispatchHealth in the Phoeniz, AZ metropolitan area. The service allows patients who may be too ill or frail to travel to the emergency room or an urgent care …

New Guidance Recommends Against Opioids for Acute Pain, Too

Updates to pain guidelines in the era of opioid addiction have focused on treatment of chronic pain, generally. The latest edict takes a close look at the practice of prescribing narcotic medications for acute pain, however—a subject all the more relevant to the urgent care provider. Improving the Safety of Opioid Use for Acute Noncancer Pain in Hospitalized Adults: A Consensus Statement from the Society of Hospital Medicine recommends limiting the use of opioids to …

Facebook Fesses Up to Asking Hospitals for Patient Data

Facebook is in hot water in the wake of revelations that Cambridge Analytica gained access to user data inappropriately. Now the social media pioneer admits that, at the same time, it was on the hunt for healthcare data on its own users, having asked hospitals to share information on illness and prescriptions for unnamed patients. Paradoxically, the company says it sought the information in order to help “major U.S. hospitals” identify patients who may need …