Practice Management
It may be premature to call it a trend, but stories of urgent care operators taking their services directly to patients continue to pop up around the country. It’s becoming a more appealing prospect to payers, too. Most recently, Mercy Care Plan granted its members access to DispatchHealth in the Phoeniz, AZ metropolitan area. The service allows patients who may be too ill or frail to travel to the emergency room or an urgent care …
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You may have already assumed this based on repeat visits by “frequent flyers” in your practice, but a recent study published in PLOS One confirms that without prompts, the majority of patients forget at least part of what they’re told by physicians. One culprit revealed by the study: limited time for provider–patients engagements. Patients surveyed remembered only 49% of their doctor’s instructions on their own; 36% did better with prompts, and 15% either could not …
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Nearly a third of patients taking part in a survey from Vitals say they’ve walked out on a physician appointment because they had to wait so long—and 20% have been so put off by wait times that they’ve switched doctors altogether. No surprise, then, that the Wait Time Report also reveals that 84% of people believe the amount of time they have to wait to see a medical provider is either “somewhat important” or “very …
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A couple visiting Duluth, MN over the holidays needed to get their baby to a doctor on New Year’s Day. Being from Portland, OR they didn’t have a provider in town. So, they checked out reviews of local providers on Yelp and decided the urgent care center at nearby St. Luke’s hospital would be a good choice. It was the right call, as they got their baby in to see a friendly, efficient doctor in …
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After too many mass murders involving guns in the U.S., more than 1,000 physicians have signed a pledge published in the Annals of Internal Medicine to proactively raise the issue of firearms safety with patients. Annals moved to offer the pledge in light of evidence that many people killed by guns (including suicides) were in contact with their healthcare provider shortly before their deaths. Ironically, the idea of publishing the pledge was raised well before …
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Shortening duration of treatment, adopting a multimodal, nonopioid model for acute pain management treatment, and establishing a system for notifying primary care providers when their patients are prescribed opiates are high on the list of recommendations just issued by the Texas Hospital Association (THA) for emergency room clinicians. While the guidelines are voluntary, they reflect a growing trend toward institutionalizing opiate prescribing practices in multiple settings around the country. They could reasonably be viewed as …
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Registered radiology technologists working in pediatric urgent care centers produced better-quality images than attending physicians in a newly published study at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. The report was published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. The aim of the study was to assess radiograph quality at urgent care centers staffed with and without technologists, as well as the utilization of radiography in a pediatric urgent care setting. The researchers looked at …
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Patient advocates have been pushing back on legislative and clinical efforts to put the brakes on widespread prescribing of opioid pain medications, on the grounds that the medications are a necessity for some patients in extreme pain. The problem—so far—is that there don’t seem to be any viable alternatives that work as well. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that could be changing, though. Chang, et al compared …
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The 2018 Recommended Immunization Schedule for Adults Aged 19 or Older from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) includes a couple of key changes especially relevant to urgent care providers who offer immunization services. As of now, among other updates, ACP recommends: Recombinant zoster vaccine (RZV; Shingrix) to prevent shingles in adults as follows: Two doses of RZV 2 to 6 months apart to adults …
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The 2017–2018 influenza season doesn’t just seem long, thanks to the high volume of cases—and deaths—this year; it’s actually going to last longer than usual, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the CDC says flu season hasn’t even peaked yet; flu activity continues to be widespread in every state except Hawaii and has remained unchanged for 3 weeks—and indicator that the natural wane is still ahead of us. Nearly 12,000 …
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