Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Visits to Urgent Care Clinics Keep Climbing

The past five years have been another good stretch for the urgent care marketplace: new data from Accenture, a management consulting firm, show that visits to urgent care clinics increased 19 percent from 2010 to 2015 (projected)—equating to 176.8 million visits this year alone. By comparison, the retail clinic sector (which offers a more limited menu of services than the typical urgent care center) is also growing, expecting to receive 18.8 million patient visits this …

CDC’s Get Smart About Antibiotics Week 2015 Supports Urgent Care Patient Education

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Get Smart About Antibiotics Week 2015 offers an opportunity for urgent care center management to get the word out about both their own services and the importance of responsible antibiotic use. With more than a third of urgent care centers in the US writing between 73 and 144 prescriptions for antibiotics each month, clinicians are all too familiar with the patient who shows up looking for a Z-Pak …

October 1: Out with ICD-9, in with ICD-10

“Urgent care” was in its infancy and electronic medical records were practically the stuff of science fiction when the ICD-9 codes were released in 1979. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) takes one giant leap toward catching up with the launch of ICD-10 codes on October 1. As of that date, ICD-9 codes will no longer be accepted. CMS has said the new coding set is expected to “advance public health research and …

New Orleans Urgent Care Center Launches Clinical Trials

In & Out Urgent Care in New Orleans is the latest urgent care center to enter the world of clinical trials. Partnering with a company called Urgent Care Clinical Trials, the center is studying treatment of shingles (herpes zoster). It’s the first trial the center has participated in. In addition to advancing the practice of urgent care and available remedies for disease states studied, participation in clinical trials can be a new source of revenue …

Are Uber-like Medical Services Really a Practical Replacement for Urgent Care?

URGENT MESSAGE: The proliferation of smartphone-accessible, on-demand healthcare services delivered to patient homes has received a lot of media coverage recently, but the “UBER” model is hardly a practical replacement for walk-in urgent care. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for Practice Velocity, Practice Management Editor for JUCM—The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Urgent Care Association of America. Uber is …

Protecting Your Position as Market Leader

It’s great to be on top, but when a clinic is “fat and happy,” its focus on sales and marketing can lose its intensity. Consequently, your clinic may be in danger of losing its crown without realizing your leadership position is in jeopardy. This month’s column addresses this dilemma faced by urgent care clinics that are market leaders. Instead of assuming that the “best offense is a good defense,” in some cases the best defense …

Adjust Your Strategy for a Down Economy

There is a broad consensus that our country’s current recession will advance to become the harshest economic crisis we have faced since the Great Depression.On the surface, spiraling unemployment and broad-based financial pressures portend trouble for most urgent care clinics. Yet, crisis inevitably breeds opportunity if clinic owners avoid being caught like a deer in the headlights and proactively move forward.This month’s column addresses economic realities and what clinics can do now—not just to stay …

How to ‘De-Commoditize’ Your Urgent Care Practice

If your practice is in its first year or two of operations, it is easy to stay on top of what your patients want, the quality of their care, and the customer service they are receiving. But as your practice grows, patient counts increase, and you add more corporate clients to your occupational medicine business, you also add links to the customer service and quality care chain. Increasing the number of care providers, nurses, office …