Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

‘No Time’ to Support Industry Advocacy? If You Have 15 Minutes and a Laptop, Think Again

Anyone who attended the Urgent Care Association’s recent convention in Las Vegas will tell you that the pandemic has done nothing to diminish the unified spirit among competitors in the urgent care marketplace. One of the reasons for this sense of community is the fact that the industry has had to fight for its place at the proverbial table. This does not mean the fight is over by any means. New challenges arise constantly, while …

The Urgent Care Industry Is Proving Its Resilience Despite Tough Times

Staff shortages, COVID-19, supply-chain challenges…the list of obstacles facing urgent care operators is both long and increasingly longstanding. Those obstacles continue to be overcome all over the country, however, thanks to the flexibility, persistence, and resilience our industry is known for. Of the top 15 companies (by number of clinics) whose locations provide walk-in/on-demand care, 12 are urgent care operators; the other three are retail clinics. Among the UC entities are the following companies, each …

Be Aware: Omicron Subvariants Linger and Are Increasing Risk for COVID-19 Reinfection

For all intents and purposes, life seems to have returned to normal more than any other time since March 2020. Masks are scarce, restaurants are crowded, and movie theaters are putting up blockbuster numbers. It can be easy to forget that the pandemic is not, in fact, over quite yet and that the threat of widespread reinfection may be more real than we’re comfortable acknowledging. California, for one, is struggling with a new wave of …

Batten Down the Hatches—a Perfect Storm Is Brewing on the Behavioral Health Front

JUCM News readers know that there’s been an increase in both clinician burnout and patient visits related to mental health complaints and crises over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also known is the fact that physician shortages and other staffing issues are proving to be challenging for urgent care centers all over the country. A new article published by The Journal of the American Medical Association notes that the clinician shortage is actually a …

By the Time the Fire Department Calls, It’s Too Late to Come Up with a Response Plan

You’re closed for the day. Maybe you’ve just sat down to dinner or are burning the midnight oil in your home office. Then the call comes: the fire department is at your urgent care center, working to extinguish flames that started in the building next door. Unfortunately, such a scenario was not hypothetical for Concentra Urgent Care in Santee, CA as a two-alarm fire swept through its commercial building recently. No one was injured, as …

Peak Vacation Season Ups the Risk for Drowning. Are You Prepared to Help the Victims?

With schools out and temperatures peaking all over the country, many families are heading to the beach and diving into the pool for relief from the heat. More frequent exposure to water means greater risk for drowning, however, especially for young and inexperienced swimmers. JAMA Pediatrics just published a safety guide to help parents understand where the greatest risks lie—and how to avoid them—on its patient page. It offers good common-sense advice for parents, such …

Advise Patients: COVID Booster Shots May Be Updated for Fall

It’s been established that being “fully vaccinated” against SARS-CoV-2 means not only the full course of initial shots but also all available booster shots. One challenge in advising patients accordingly is that recommendations keep changing. The latest revelation from the Food and Drug Administration is that doses of booster shots may be modified by autumn 2022 in order to include some version of the omicron variant that has proved to be dominant since its discovery. …

Be Aware: ‘Big Tech’ Could Be Mining Your Systems for Sensitive Patient Information

A class action lawsuit filed by a John Doe plaintiff alleges that Meta, parent company of Facebook, has been peeking into the records of at least 644 hospital systems or “medical provider web properties.” As reported in Healthcare Dive, the suit comes on the heels of an investigative report by The Markup and Stat News that revealed specific instances in which Meta’s Pixel tracking tool dug up highly sensitive patient information that winds up in …

It’s Now Harder for Physicians to Be Prosecuted for Opioid Rxs—but That Doesn’t Diminish the Risks

The Supreme Court of the United States just issued a ruling that will make it more difficult for prosecutors to bring charges against physicians on the grounds that they violated the Controlled Substances Act. In a 6–3 vote, SCOTUS rejected lower courts’ convictions of a pair of pain specialists in Alabama and Arizona. Justice Stephen Breyer’s majority opinion expressed that the existing regulatory language is “ambiguous.” It went on to advise that future prosecutorial efforts …

The Heat Is On—and Some of Your Patients Feel It More Than Others

It’s only the second week of summer, but already some parts of the country are experiencing temperatures we don’t usually see until the “dog days” of August. Virginia, for one, was seeing record temperatures for this time of year, with extended periods of 90 degrees and above predicted as reported by WFIR News Talk Radio. With that comes concerns from the commonwealth health department that emergency rooms will soon be hit with larger numbers of …