Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

CMS May Have Overpaid $729 Million in Incentives—Now They Want It Back

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) may have doled out more than $729 million in incentive payments for use of electronic health record systems that didn’t actually comply with federal standards, according to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at Health and Human Services. The OIG has already uncovered instances where providers who received payments could not document that they were using electronic health records in “meaningful” ways—a key requirement to reap …

Another Application for Telemedicine: Adolescent Concussions

Add adolescent concussion to the growing list of conditions for which telemedicine can be useful, in terms of effectiveness, cost, and satisfaction scores, according to data presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. Researchers employed a nurse practitioner-led, remote assessment of young athletes (13–18 years of age) with concussions, in conjunction with in-person athletic trainers. The most common positive feedback involved the accessibility of the program from any location, notably …

Maintain Holiday Awareness and Post Hours for Independence Day

The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission tells us we can expect a spike in emergency room visits on or around the Independence Day holiday next week. If you’ve done a good job of alerting your community to the fact that many ED-bound patients could be treated just as well (not to mention faster and less expensively) in your urgent care center, that means you can expect to see more traffic, too. Make sure your holiday …

Attention Small Urgent Care Operators: CMS May Lower Threshold for MACRA Exemptions

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has broadened the definition of “small providers” as it applies to the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, to the extent that physician practices with less than $90,000 in Medicare revenue or fewer than 200 unique Medicare patients per year would be exempt from having to comply with MACRA. Between this new standard and the one proposed for next year, the move will exclude roughly 834,000 more …

UCA Takes to Capitol Hill

A contingent from the Urgent Care Association (UCA) descended on Congressional offices to school lawmakers and their staffs on the important role urgent care plays in the healthcare continuum. Coinciding with the UCA Urgent Care Convention & Expo at nearby National Harbor, the visit put 15 UCA representatives face-to-face with 75 congressional staffers, including those who work on committees with jurisdiction over Medicaid and veteran’s healthcare. In addition to giving lawmakers a better idea of …

Humana Says It’s Out of Individual Markets, Regardless of Any New Legislation

The Affordable Care Act—also known as the ACA, or “Obamacare”—famously drove many insurers out of state exchanges due to the difficulty they had in turning a profit through their participation. President Trump says the plan he’d like to see in place would be both superior and less expensive than his predecessor’s. Humana isn’t planning on sticking around to find out, however, and has announced it will not be participating in any individual insurance market after …

Now That We’re Used to Telemedicine, How About ‘Text-Med’?

The ink is barely dry on agreements allowing more telemedicine than ever before, but there are indications that some corners of the healthcare marketplace are already moving on toward The Next Big Thing: text-based medical encounters. A Denver-based startup called CirrusMD has pulled together $7 million in capital it plans to devote to expanding what’s thought to be the industry’s first “text-first” workflow. CirrusMD has cut its teeth on working with large health systems and …

Physician Ownership is No Longer the Norm Across Practice Types

There are more physician-employees than physician-owners across the practice landscape, according to new data from the American Medical Association—the first time under 50% of patient care physicians have an ownership stake in their medical practice since the AMA started keeping track. While the data do not reflect urgent care specifically (including this market as “other”), they do show the share of physicians with ownership stake in a medical practice fell to 47% in 2016. That’s …

Medicare ID Changes Are Looming, with or without Clear Guidance from CMS

Here’s what we know: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is going to stop including Social Security numbers on Medicare ID cards. Here’s what we don’t know: How this is going to work, and how it’s going to affects healthcare providers. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act requires CMS to remove Social Security numbers from Medicare cards due to increasing risk for identity theft and fraud. The year-long process of issuing new …

Last Season’s Flu Vaccine Gets a C+ Overall, But Failed in Protecting Older Patients

The 2016–2017 flu season is far enough behind us that health system numbers crunchers can assess how well the vaccine performed—and it’s definitely a mixed bag. While it was a good match for the predominant strain (Type A H3N2) and was around 42% effective in preventing illness severe enough to send patients to the doctor’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admits that it was essentially ineffective in protecting people age 65 and …