Practice Management
Minnesota has seen a huge uptick in measles cases lately, coinciding statistically with a drop in immunization rates in the state. In addition to the antivaccine movement going on all over the country, Minnesota has a subgroup of activists who are also anti-immigration that has tried to convince Somali immigrants that vaccines are dangerous as a way to dissuade more Somalis from moving in. The first measles cases cropped up a month ago, and public …
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The Food and Drug Administration—not considered to be strong advocates of new-age approaches to medicine, typically—suggested recently that alternative and holistic therapies like acupuncture and chiropractors can play an important role in managing pain for patients. It’s actually part of the FDA’s ongoing plan to reduce the need for opioid pain medications in the U.S. The agency recommends that healthcare providers “become more familiar with alternative therapies for treating pain, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, …
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As we’ve told you previously, visionary urgent care operators are finding golden opportunities in empty spaces that in years past would not have been considered prime locations for healthcare facilities (banks, restaurants…). Now it looks like there could be similar opportunity in retail space being vacated in larger shopping centers and malls. An article in Business Insider suggests that big retail spaces, already finding it harder to fill vacancies with traditional shopping outlets, will have …
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While it may take patients a little time to get used to the idea, prepayment and credit card holds are becoming more and common among urgent care operators who are tired of chasing down payment from patients who’ve already received care—or having to write off charges altogether. Revenue cycle management leaders like Practice Velocity actively promote the concept to their partners. As with anything new (especially anything new involving money), some patients object to the …
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Aetna has apparently had enough of trying in vain to make participation in Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare) exchanges profitable, and will exit all ACA exchanges for the 2018 coverage year. They follow a long line of insurers who already checked out, complaining that the ACA program simply made it impossible to conduct business, economically. Aetna announced their plans right after revealing that they’d drastically reduce their exchange business for the 2017 coverage year, …
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If you noticed a lot of stories in the local newspaper and TV news reports trying to spell out the difference between the emergency room and urgent care—and when one should go to one or the other—in the last year, thank the Urgent Care Association. Or, better yet, congratulation them on winning awards for their Urgency or Emergency? campaign. The campaign, led by the PR firm of L.C. Williams & Associates, won “best of the …
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Missourians who still haven’t gotten the message that the emergency room is the wrong place to be for a sore throat or other nonemergent complaints are in for a rude awakening if they’re covered by Anthem. Starting this summer, Anthem will stop paying a dime for visits to Missouri EDs if the patient is deemed to have a “minor ailment” (which, in addition to sore throat, includes, rash, mild fever, and ear or eye pain—anything …
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Brooklyn (NY) Borough President Eric Adams has a message for basketball fans, concert goers, and cinephiles in his native environs: Stay out of the emergency room unless you absolutely have to be there; the urgent care center is often a much better, faster, and less costly option. Adams is so keen on that message that he recorded a series of public service announcements that play in the Barclays Center arena and high-end movie theaters in …
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It can be easy to become complacent about doing driver physicals required by the Department of Transportation. “Rubber stamping” them can have dire consequences for the patient, the employer, and the general public, and even raise your legal risk, however. Occ med and urgent care giant Concentra has been hit with a class action lawsuit in connection with a multiple-fatality bus crash in Maryland last November. The complaint claims that Concentra knew or should have …
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Urgent care and occupational medicine seem to go together naturally—small wonder, then, that 91% of urgent care centers offer some form of occupational medicine services, according to a mini survey from the Urgent Care Association. It’s profitable, too; of the centers that do have occ med, over half said it accounts for up to 15% of their business. Part of that success lies in offering quality services at a reasonable price, but you still have …
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