Practice Management
Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of JUCM, The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, a member of the Board of Directors of the Urgent Care Association of America, and Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for Practice Velocity. URGENT MESSAGE: Twenty-five states are now seeing head lice that are resistant to most common over-the-counter remedies, creating a nuisance for parents and a potential business opportunity for urgent care. Between 6 and 12 million …
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Emphasis on timely patient flow, reducing wait times, and maximizing provider efficiency may leave urgent care clinicians at greater risk for burnout than ever before—and that’s on top of the pressures reported in a new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The data show that burnout rates, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation among physicians are going up and that satisfaction with work–life balance is going down. Fifty-four percent of the subjects reported at least one …
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As the number of urgent care facilities and retail clinics goes up, visits to the emergency room go down, according to the 2015 Cost Trends Report from the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. The number of urgent care facilities in the commonwealth grew eightfold between 2008 and 2015, the report says. The report noted a 30 percent drop in ED use when there’s a “convenient care” facility nearby. Meanwhile, the Center for Health Information and Analysis …
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There are new data supporting the belief that emergency rooms are not doing enough to stem overcrowding—a longstanding rationale for visiting an urgent care center for nonemergent complaints. A new study published in Health Affairs says that while more hospitals are adopting interventions to prevent overcrowding (eg, bedside registration, scheduling elective surgeries on weekends), far too many are not doing enough. Researchers from Albany Medical College, George Washington University, and Harvard Medical School report that …
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In a relatively down year in the single-tenant net lease medical sector, urgent care centers continue to pique more interest than other healthcare properties. (A net lease is one in which the tenant pays all expenses of the property—property taxes, common areas, building maintenance, and utilities—as if they owned it.) The Boulder Group, an investment real estate services firm, reports that in the third quarter of 2015 cap rates in the medical sector compressed, while …
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The national mainstream media are starting to take up the debate over when patients really need to go to the emergency room vs other settings like urgent care. US News & World Report just published a story by Elaine Cox, MD, that draws a parallel between the Twitter age, where people have gotten used to expressing themselves in 140 characters and feel they need immediate care for whatever ails them, and data showing that ED …
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It’s no surprise that patients prefer doctors who pay attention to them—but new data show that patients can feel they’re competing with computer screens for the physician’s focus, which can lead to concerns about the quality of care they’re receiving. A study by medical sociologist Richard Frankel, PhD of the Indiana University School of Medicine found that some doctors spend more than 80 percent of their time in exam rooms interacting with their computer instead …
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URGENT MESSAGE: Five years after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)—also known as the “Affordable Care Act,” or “Obamacare”—many independent urgent care practices are still uncertain of their obligations. In addition to legal mandates, a competitive job market can make a compelling case for offering or subsidizing employee health benefits. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Manager Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, a member of the …
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If improving your urgent care center’s financial management is one of your New Year resolutions, consider signing up for Financial Forecasting: Learn How to Use Key Financial Tools, a live webinar to be hosted by the Urgent Care Association (UCA) on Thursday, December 17 at 1 pm, Central. Speaker Luke Hart, a former urgent care CEO, will discuss tools to help increase cash flow, better assess your debts and risks, and leverage strong relationships with …
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Family medicine has a long way to go in supporting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ goal of tying fully half of traditional fee-for-service Medicare payments to value-based payment models by 2018, if a new survey from the American Academy of Family Medicine is any indication. Urgent care typically operates on a parallel, fee-for-service model, but the evolution of how other practice environments come to terms with the changing dynamics of the healthcare …
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