Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

CDC Offers More Guidance on Antibiotic Use in Outpatient Settings

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been very active in pushing for more responsible antibiotic prescribing lately. Now they’ve issued more formal direction in the form of guidelines for antibiotic prescribing in outpatient settings, offering four stewardship “pillars” for prescribers to follow. CDC’s Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship, published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), recommends that outpatient facilities like urgent care centers demonstrate dedication to and accountability for optimizing …

What Does a Trump Presidency Mean for Urgent Care Operators?

With a chief executive who’s used to being a CEO, what changes can urgent care operators expect in their role as employers once Donald Trump takes office in January? The law firm of Brennan, Manna & Diamond predicts a pro-employer climate overall in a Client Alert it issued this week, based partly on expected appointment of several Supreme Court justices likely to be more conservative than their retiring predecessors. That will be most evident in …

Holiday Celebrations Often Followed by a Trip to Urgent Care

Whether it’s due to undercooking, carving, or trying to deep fry a turkey, the day after Thanksgiving is the second busiest day of the year in urgent care (followed by the day after Christmas), according to a CityMD survey of its own physicians. Overall, 60% of CityMD’s urgent care centers in the New York and Seattle areas see an increase in patient visits related to cooking wounds, such as lacerations and burns, around the Thanksgiving …

Welcome Potential New Patients in Their Own Language

Hospitals are actually required to have a qualified medical interpreter on hand when treating patients who don’t understand English well enough to participate fully in discussion of their care (though, as a recent blog post on KevinMD points out, it’s a rule that is followed inconsistently, at best). Urgent care centers—especially those in an area with a high number of immigrant residents or businesses—may be well positioned to fill the gap for those patients. The …

Retail Clinics Don't Help Clear Traffic in the ED

New data published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine definitively show that retail clinics located near hospitals do nothing to reduce the number of visits to the emergency room. Proponents of drugstore, grocery, and “big box store” clinics have suggested in the past that offering walk-in care in a retail setting would keep patients with low-acuity complaints out of the ED, but apparently many patients don’t see it that way. The Annals report focused on …

Let the Community Know You Can Handle Eye Injuries

Whether you have a slit lamp or not, it’s likely you see a fair number of patients presenting with eye-related complaints. If you don’t, you may be stuck referring most of those patients out. If you do have a slit lamp—and staff properly trained to use it—you need to make sure athletes and youth coaches and administrators in your area know you can provide urgent eye care when needed. Roughly 120,000 people presented to EDs …

What’s Next for the Affordable Care Act?

The Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) has given millions of citizens access to healthcare they didn’t have before, driving up volume in some urgent care centers and emergency rooms. It’s also put sometimes unbearable pressure on insurers to find a way to stay profitable in the state-run exchanges; most that originally participated have bowed out because they were losing too much money, in fact. With the election of Donald Trump as our next president, …

Give Yourself the Gift of Seasonal Search Engine Optimization Updates

It’s likely every successful urgent care operator has caught on to the idea that effective search engine optimization (SEO, the key terms and phrases that make your web content identifiable to Google and other search engines) is necessary for you to stand out in your marketplace. But have you thought about updating your SEO terms seasonally? Holiday optimization tips for remaining competitive in the SERP, on the website Search Engine Land, includes urgent care centers …

Clinicians Take Note: CDC Warns of Deadly Drug-Resistant Candida auris in the U.S.

Calling it “an emerging threat,” the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging healthcare providers in all settings to “act now to better understand, contain, and stop the spread of” infection caused by drug-resistant Candida auris. CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, notes that C auris can be fatal, making the new drug-resistant strain especially concerning. The CDC recently issued its first report of 13 cases in the United States (in …

Medicare Reimbursements to Physicians to Jump $200 Million in 2017

Changes in the way the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) pays for primary care will push roughly $140 million to providers next year—with provisions in a new rule bringing another $60 million for a total of $200 million above 2016 payments. There may be even more coming down the road, as CMS says several coding and payment changes could eventually lead to as much as $4 billion or more being funneled into care …