Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Make Patients Aware of Your Clinic’s Holiday Plans

Patients visit urgent care centers because they’re convenient places to get quality care, and often at a time when the primary care office is closed. Those advantages—and the goodwill they engender—go out the window when patients waste a trip only to find your doors locked and the lights out, however. With Thanksgiving next week, make sure you’ve done everything you can to make the public aware of when you will and will not be open. …

Come the New Year, DOT Needs You to Test for Opioids

The Federal Department of Transportation (DOT) is getting with the times and adding opioid screens to its drug testing program. Specifically, providers who conduct physicals and assessments for the DOT will have to include hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, and oxycodone in their screens as of January 1, 2018. In addition, methylenedioxyamphetamine has been added as an initial test analyte, and methylenedioxyethylamphetamine has been removed as a confirmatory test analyte. Adding the four semisynthetic opioids has been …

Deal Gone Bad Forces Florida Urgent Care Center to Liquidate

An urgent care center in Florida is being forced to shut down, not because it couldn’t draw enough patients or provided bad care, but because of a highly charged disagreement over the nature of its start-up funds. Here’s what everyone agrees on: A Florida woman provided substantial funds to help a new urgent care center get going 2 years ago. After that, it gets harder to separate fact from fiction in the case of a …

Attention Turns to Improving Rural Healthcare—and How Urgent Care Can Contribute

Rural healthcare is such an entity unto itself that Utah is in the midst of celebrating an official Rural Health Week right now, with the stated purpose of drawing attention to efforts to improve the care available to residents who live in less-traveled parts of the state. Coinciding with that, the American Hospital Association (AHA) is investigating what role urgent care can play in filling “access gaps” in medically underserved regions. AHA’s Task Force on …

North Carolina Blues Dial Up Telehealth Offerings

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is collaborating with MDLive to put more patients in touch with providers using remote hookups via an MDLive app, with an average wait time of less than 10 minutes. The insurer says it recognizes “the potential of telehealth to help providers deliver their services in a more cost-efficient setting…and facilitate value-driven care for patients.” That level of access is especially important in areas where ill patients would have …

Will Plans to Start Rx Deliveries Affect CVS’s Retail Clinics Strategy?

Amazon’s apparent plans to get into the pharmaceutical distribution business—the online retailer has already gotten permits that would pave the way in several states—may have pushed CVS to announce plans to start delivering medications the same day they’re prescribed in certain cities, and next-day everywhere early in 2018. The irony is that CVS has sunk untold resources into its retail clinic business, based on drawing more customers into their brick-and-mortar locations. This begs the question …

UCA Webinar: Best Practices at the Front Desk

If you think of the front desk as nothing more than the first point of contact for patients venturing to be treated in your urgent care, you may be missing a great opportunity. It’s also the hub where patient relations, reimbursement, collections, and more meet; give it short shrift at your own risk. On the other hand, your front desk managers, administrators, and practice managers can learn more about how to maximize its value in …

More New Data Paint Rosy Picture of Urgent Care’s Future

Just a week ago, we shared data from TMR Research indicating that the urgent care industry would continue its upward trajectory for years to come. Now another report, this one from Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE), offers even more data corroborating those findings. Urgent Care Centers Market—Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014–2020 analyzes the potential for growth in specific aspects of the urgent care industry, such as illness, injury, physical, …

Guidelines Push for More Patients to Receive Shingles Vaccinations

Patients in the 50- to 59-year-old age range should receive vaccination against shingles, according to the latest recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). That guidance accompanied a rare—and nearly evenly split—nod to one vaccine over another. In an 8-7 vote, ACIP recommended the recently approved Shingrix (GlaxoSmithKline) over Zostavex (Merck). Both vaccines are FDA-approved for use in patients 50 and over, but ACIP recommends Zostavex only in patients over the age of …

Telemedicine Enables Faster Testing for Bloodborne Pathogen Exposure

OSHA says employers have to evaluate for bloodborne pathogens immediately following possible exposure via needle-stick or specific eye, mouth, other mucous membrane, nonintact skin, or parenteral contact with blood. “Immediate” can be tricky on the jobsite or for first responders and clinical personnel, however, so U.S. HealthWorks is trying to facilitate faster access through a new telemedicine program. The company has an app that facilitates access at any time, any day and includes comprehensive medical …