Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Urgent Care Has a Place in Adolescent Suicide Screening

There aren’t many things more truly urgent than a child considering suicide. More adolescents kill themselves than die from cancer, heart disease, and many other causes combined, in fact. Now researchers at the University of Missouri‒Kansas City School of Medicine say a brief screening tool designed to detect suicidal risk was shown to be effective in a pediatric urgent care clinic. Considering previous studies showing that 17% of high school students had seriously considered suicide—and …

Southwest Conference Offers Interactive Education for Operators, Staff, and Clinicians

Urgent care clinicians, operators, and staff will gather in Houston at one of the larger regional urgent care conferences in the country later this month. The 2-day Southwest Urgent Care Conference offers both a Clinical Track and a Leadership track in deference to the unique makeup of the industry, with clinicians often also being business owners and corporate leaders. The clinical curriculum was also designed with consideration for the fact that nurse practitioners and physician …

More Cancer Patients Are Heading to Urgent Care for Immediate Needs

Oncology is not likely to pop up on a list of specialties formerly pursued by urgent care clinicians, and patients are not going to be getting chemo at their neighborhood urgent care center. Nonetheless, familiarity with various cancers—and even more importantly, their treatments and complications—is reaching need-to-know status for urgent care providers. Whether it’s sudden concerns over symptoms of infection or even “just” a high fever, cancer patients need immediate care more often than patients …

Nearly Three Quarters of Clinicians Use Telehealth

Less than 3 years ago, barely more than half of healthcare providers used telemedicine and related services. Today, however, that proportion sits ag 71%, according to two new HIMSS Analytics studies that analyzed inpatient and outpatient telemedicine. The data indicate that “hub-and-spoke” models, in which the flow of care draws patients from lower acuity outpatient settings to larger, more comprehensive facilities, are the most popular, accounting for 59.6% of provider use. (These are more common …

Pamela Sullivan Takes Office as President of UCA Board of Directors

Pamela Sullivan, MD, MBA, FACP, PT was officially introduced as the newly elected president of the Urgent Care Association’s Board of Directors during the 2017 Urgent Care Convention & Expo, held this week in National Harbor, MD. Sullivan takes over from Steve Sellars, MBA, who served as president for the 2016–2017 term. In accepting the position, she stressed the necessity to help patients understand “their evolving healthcare options, while innovating new business models and processes …

Beware Deceptively ‘Simple’ Diagnoses

A pair of recent news stores add up to a cautionary tale for clinicians inclined to assume ailments commonly identified in the urgent care setting pose no serious threats. One case resulted in the partial amputation of a child’s leg, while the other cost a child her life. In Akron, OH a 6-year-old girl’s strep throat was followed by a flu diagnosis. When her left leg began to swell and she begged her parents not …

Greenway Health Suffers Direct Hit in Ransomware Attack, Affecting EHR Platform

Greenway Health has acknowledged that some of its customers lost full use of the company’s Intergy electronic health records platform due to a recent ransomware attack. The company says it expects minimal loss of data, and that there is no evidence to suggest that any patient data has been misused at this time. Greenway has vowed to support affected practices, and maintains that no further problems are expected, either on Intergy or its other platforms.

Be Careful When Asking About the ‘S’ Word in Interviewing Candidates

Different markets have different standards of living—and compensation. So, it’s important to get a sense early on whether what you’re willing to pay aligns well with qualified job seekers. That’s going to be a lot tougher if an emerging trend continues to grow, however. Some cities and states are forbidding interviewers from asking candidates about their current, or most recent, salary. Legislation to that effect was just passed in Philadelphia, though the city will delay …

ED ‘Superusers’ Have Unmet Needs Beyond Their Symptoms

Urgent care has taken root, among other reasons, based on its capability to treat patients who otherwise would be sitting (and waiting) in local hospital emergency rooms with nonemergent illness and injury. This benefits not only our industry and the patients who need urgent care, but also those patients who will find a less-crowded ED than they might find in a world without urgent care. And some of them—particularly those covered by Medicare and Medicaid, …

Physicians Make More Money in Rural, Low-Cost Areas

There may be a certain amount of prestige to be aligned with major teaching hospitals in Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but physicians on the outskirts of medium-size cities are fetching higher pay these days, according to data just released by Doximity, a social network for clinicians. Researchers found salaries to be highest in rural, low-cost areas within medium-sized metropolitan areas. Doctors and advanced practice providers in the Charlotte, NC metro area are …