Practice Management
The Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) is driving higher volume in the emergency room at the same time it creates conditions resulting in lower availability of providers, according to a pair of new studies published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. The end result: longer waits that frustrate patients and a patient load that clinicians may be hard pressed to keep pace with. While the studies were focused on Illinois and Massachusetts, the results …
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It may seem early, but September is actually the ideal time to start promoting influenza immunization programs in your urgent care center. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all patients 6-months-old and above receive a flu shot by the end of October. In addition to traditional promotional channels like local advertising and social media, don’t forget the value of good old-fashioned human contact; let patients who come in for everyday complaints that …
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Payers, politicians, and practitioners don’t often line up on the same side of issues, but in Colorado they’re united in their distaste for a proposed single-payer system that would increase health coverage in the state—at the cost of a $25 billion tax increase that could drive employers out, some fear. Proponents counter that “ColoradoCare” would end up saving more than $6 billion annually by 2019. Under the program, residents would choose among private health insurance …
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Providers are employing evaluation and management (E/M) code 99214 more than ever—and seeing fewer denials and higher reimbursements than in the past, ultimately. That doesn’t mean it’s open season on the higher level code (and associated higher reimbursements), however; documenting medical necessity sufficiently is still critical to ensuring the code is valid compared with the reigning most common code (99213). Operators must ensure coders understand that while a level 3 visit requires one to three …
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Colleges (not to mention nervous moms and dads) probably do everything they can to ensure that students know where the infirmary or student health center is located. While that’s clearly important, hours of operation tend to me somewhat limited. Students, especially those who may away from home for the first time, need to have a back-up plan when injury or illness strikes—and your urgent care center should be part of it. Ensure that it is …
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Urgent care operators that offer over-the-counter soaps marked as “antibacterial” in restrooms or other public areas should be aware that such products can no longer be marketed in the U.S., thanks to a new ruling by the Food and Drug Administration. Sharp-eyed (and certainly germaphobic) patients and other visitors to your urgent care center may take umbrage with signage or containers making claims that the soaps are antibacterial. The FDA made the decision after a …
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If parents bring in young children complaining of acute back pain, try taking a history that might be just a little more detailed than usual before ordering expensive images or referring. Actually, focusing on one specific question might reveal the answer: Did the onset of pain coincide with the start of the school year? If the answer is “yes,” ask for a detailed list of what goes into the child’s backpack every morning, and how …
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Recent headlines make the problem crystal clear—“For Each Hour of Clinical Time, Docs Spend 2 on Desk Work” from MedPage Today is a good example—but they don’t tell the whole story, at least where urgent care is concerned. The current hubbub stems from a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine that reveals physicians in ambulatory care settings spend almost 2 hours on clerical tasks for every single hour they spend with patients. Even in …
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With preparations already underway for the 2016–2017 flu season, this is an ideal time to look further into the correlation between pneumonia and influenza—especially in urgent care, where respiratory illness is the number-one diagnosis code recorded. Pneumonia is the most common complication of influenza, and leads to significant morbidity and mortality, with the elderly and patients with comorbid conditions being most at risk. Glenn Harnett, MD will lead a discussion of this deadly combination in …
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California residents who have to visit out-of-network medical providers will get much-needed economic protection under a new bill just passed by state legislators. The bipartisan bill, AB72, assures that patients who received care in in-network facilities would have to pay only in-network cost sharing, regardless of whether the provider who treated the patient is in-network or out-of-network. This would not apply to self-insured employer health plans, however, which are shielded from state regulations by the …
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