Practice Management
While it may be premature to call the upcoming months “COVID season,” it’s a fact that case and hospitalization rates are starting to climb in multiple U.S. states. As such, it’s a good time to reconsider the importance of keeping your coding on point. The consequences of getting it wrong could result in underpayment—clearly not good for any business—but the consequences could be far worse if improper coding results in patients and payers being billed …
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Whether due to a scarcity of candidates or hoops those candidates and their prospective employers have to jump through in order to meet state regulations, it takes a long time to bring a new healthcare provider on board. In fact, according to an article newly published by Becker’s Hospital Review, only employers in consulting, finance, and engineering have to look longer than the 59.5 days (median) it takes to hire a new provider. Bringing a …
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The wildfires raging through Maui are just the latest example of how environmental disasters place healthcare facilities in the position of having to provide care for the sick and injured in the community while also ensuring the needs of team members are met, not to mention guarding against threats to the facility itself. A recent report from NBC News told part of that story through the experience of Reza Danesh, MD, who runs an urgent …
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MedExpress is the latest healthcare company to announce downsizing designed to trim operating expenses. WSAZ News in Huntington/Charleston, WV reported the company is laying off all registered nurses at 150 locations as early as September 7, in concert with even more widespread layoffs in the UnitedHealth Group/Optum universe. It’s a move not likely to be adopted by other urgent care operations, which for the most part do not count RNs among their clinical teams to …
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Uncommonly high temperatures this summer have led increasing numbers of patients to seek care for heat-related conditions at hospitals and urgent care centers across the country. Even in Florida, where people are prepared for extreme heat, emergency room and urgent care operators say they’re seeing more patients with symptoms of heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and other conditions than in recent years. According to a report from WUSF Public Media in Orlando, urgent care centers in …
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Offering information on various disease states, seasonal health concerns, and public health initiatives on your website is a great way to build engagement and establish a reputation as a trustworthy partner in patients’ wellbeing. Relying on technology to populate webpages with that information can be a great timesaver and help keep costs down—as long as that technology doesn’t run amok, as it apparently did recently on the website of a New York City urgent care …
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Numerous companies that have been hugely successful in various aspects of the retail business keep trying to get a foothold in healthcare. The most notorious example would probably be Walmart, which has launched unsuccessful ventures in both the brick-and-mortar and virtual spaces. The latter is now of greater interest than ever to Amazon Clinic, which launched in November 2022 but just recently became accessible to patients in every U.S. state. This initiative may have a …
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The midpoint of summer saw the steepest increase on COVID-19 since December 2022, leading some public health authorities and academics to wonder aloud whether we could see another tripledemic—simultaneous, high rates of COVID, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus—as winter approaches. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospitalizations for COVID-19 jumped 10.3% in the week ending July 15. Emergency room visits were also up for the week ending July 21. Given …
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Nurse practitioners and physician assistants—or, collectively, advanced-practice providers (APPs)—have been essential members of the urgent care clinical team for years. Their presence on the payroll enables urgent care operators to offer high-quality care to more patients on a daily basis than would be possible without them, or with an all-physician team. Now it seems even more healthcare employers are waking up to the benefits of working with APPs. According to new data from the U.S. …
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When hackers launched a cyberattack against Prospect Medical Holdings in Los Angeles, the ripples were felt from coast to coast and ultimately forced cessation of urgent care operations temporarily. As reported by CBS News Moneywatch, even some who escaped a total shut down found themselves working without the benefits of computers for a time, as Crozer-Chester Medical System in Springfield, PA reverted to using hard copies for necessary documentation and records. That was expected to …
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