Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Want to Engender a Loyal Patient Base? Mocking Them on Social Media Is Not the Way to Go

Unless they’ve come in for an annual physical or something similarly mundane, patients are probably not having the best of days if they’re visiting an urgent care center. Certainly medical emergencies and childbirth are high-stress situations. It should go without saying that all parties deserve to be treated with respect as a bare minimum at all times. Apparently it does need to be said, though. As reported by 11 Alive in Atlanta, four nurses at …

Visits Are Up, Staffing Is Down—Moving Some UC Operators to Reconsider Telehealth

A shortage of providers while patient visits climb due to flu, respiratory syncytial virus, and COVID-19 is having a negative impact on multiple practice settings. Compounding the challenge in urgent care is the fact that some patients turn to this setting when they’ve already experienced delays in getting care in primary care, specialty practices, or the emergency room. We’ve told you recently about one urgent care center that’s dealing with the traffic-flow problem by going …

With High-Risk Pandemic Habits Hanging On, Urgent Care May Need to Fill a Primary Care Role

Some people who should be in the know say the pandemic is over, while other presumably knowledgeable sources say it’s merely diminished, with the threat of another surge being a constant concern. What’s indisputable is the fact that many habits patients developed during the lockdown phase are hard to shake. One is staying away from medical offices. New data reported by STAT show that visits to primary care practices are still down 10.3% compared with …

If PA’s Start Moving Away from Urgent Care, It Won’t Be Because of the Money

Physician assistants and nurse practitioners have become essential members of the urgent care clinical team. In some instances, they head the clinical team, and run their own urgent care operations. The desire to practice medicine in a unique environment isn’t the only draw for PAs, however. As reported by Becker’s Hospital Review, urgent care PAs rank third on the list of top 10 highest-compensated practice settings. Quoting information from the 2022 Advanced Practice Provider Compensation …

As the Rural Hospital Market Shrinks, Urgent Care Could Be the Only Hope for Quality Healthcare

Rural hospitals, by their very nature, tend to be remote outposts that serve widespread communities with few other options for immediate care. When one closes, it’s a problem—and since 2005, that problem keeps growing in severity. The market has shrunk by 183 facilities nationwide in that time span, according to a new article published by Becker’s Hospital CFO Report. Texas alone lost 23. Tennessee has 15 fewer. That’s a lot of families who can no …

Flu Season Is Living Up to the Hype. Is Your Team Ready for a Long Slog?

Every year, there are some parties decrying that flu season is going to be devastating; usually the dire predictions don’t come to fruition. This year that’s not the case, however, and the recent holiday weekend helped compound an already serious influenza season. As noted in an article published by Medpage Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says flu-related hospitalizations have nearly doubled since Thanksgiving, to the point that they’re higher than they’ve been …

Packed Waiting Rooms May Require Creative Solutions

With alarming, simultaneous increases in cases of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus and the future of COVID-19 cases unclear, we can expect heavy patient volumes in urgent care centers over the coming months. While urgent care is known for its efficient way of providing excellent care, systems in place to keep patient flow on point will be put to the test. Some urgent care centers are already altering their norms in response. UnityPoint Health in …

Orthopedic ‘Urgent Care’ May Be Poised for a Growth Spurt. Here’s What It Means to You

Specialty urgent care centers have proved to be challenging from a business standpoint, traditionally. Few (if any) orthopedic urgent care operations have been able to survive unless they were attached to a hospital system or larger, traditional orthopedic practice. Those, however, may be on the cusp of a growth—and that could make for some competition with the mainstream urgent care marketplace. As noted in a report from KSL TV, for example, Intermountain Healthcare’s Southwest Urgent …

If You’re Vexed by the Shortage of X-Ray Techs, You May Need to Get Creative

Physicians aren’t the only healthcare professionals in short supply across the United States. Urgent care centers have been wrestling with a dearth of x-ray technicians for some time now. Given that the ability to offer x-ray services is a distinguishing characteristic that sets urgent care apart from some other walk-in settings, this is a fairly significant problem. Some urgent care centers have had to come up with innovative solutions in order to keep patients satisfied. …

Could Opioid Use Disorder Be the Rare Condition Where Telemedicine Works for Urgent Care?

Many urgent care operators have tried to introduce telemedicine services as a way to help patients get care when there’s simply no other way. While it did just that for a lot of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, few have found a way to make it work on an ongoing basis. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be instances in which virtual care is a valid and useful option, however. One of those might include treatment …