Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

More Cancer Patients Are Heading to Urgent Care for Immediate Needs

Oncology is not likely to pop up on a list of specialties formerly pursued by urgent care clinicians, and patients are not going to be getting chemo at their neighborhood urgent care center. Nonetheless, familiarity with various cancers—and even more importantly, their treatments and complications—is reaching need-to-know status for urgent care providers. Whether it’s sudden concerns over symptoms of infection or even “just” a high fever, cancer patients need immediate care more often than patients …

Nearly Three Quarters of Clinicians Use Telehealth

Less than 3 years ago, barely more than half of healthcare providers used telemedicine and related services. Today, however, that proportion sits ag 71%, according to two new HIMSS Analytics studies that analyzed inpatient and outpatient telemedicine. The data indicate that “hub-and-spoke” models, in which the flow of care draws patients from lower acuity outpatient settings to larger, more comprehensive facilities, are the most popular, accounting for 59.6% of provider use. (These are more common …

CDC Warning: Shigella is the Latest Pathogen to Show Signs of Resistance

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a Health Advisory to warn clinicians of emerging Shigella strains with elevated minimum inhibitory concentration values for ciprofloxacin. The advisory outlines new guidance for clinical diagnosis, management, and reporting, and offers new recommendations for laboratories and public health officials. Recent data from the CDC, and from various state and local health agencies, indicate these strains frequently have a quinolone-resistance gene that could lead to clinically significant …

Good Signage Drives Traffic—So Ensure Yours Is Legal

Speakeasies were well-advised to make their locations hard to spot. Urgent care centers, not so much, especially given that patients are not at their best when they’re looking for you, and the industry’s “brand” is so tied in to convenience. Local zoning boards have rules governing location, size, and general appearance of signage, though, so be sure to stay on the right side of the law when devising yours. My Care Urgent Care in Columbus, …

The More Cumbersome the EHR System, the Bigger the Drain on Revenue

The more time physicians spend dealing with electronic health record systems, the less money they make and the less time they have for providing care directly to patients, according to new data published in Health Affairs. The article says about half the time physicians spend working in EHR is during patient encounters. The other half of the time—when they’re not with patients, in other words—their time working within the EHR goes uncompensated, essentially. The authors …

How Colleagues Treat Each Other Affects Quality of Care—and Outcomes

Rude behavior in the workplace might cost you good employees. Even worse, though, a new study indicates the consequences of incivility extend to patients. In a blog post for The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a practicing physician at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, describes what happened when clinical staff participating in an Israeli training exercise were broken into 24 pairs …

Urgent Care is One Focus of New CMS Antibiotic Stewardship Initiative

As antibiotic resistance continues to grow, organizations from the Urgent Care Association of America to the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have asked their audiences to take a close look at what they can do to curb unnecessary prescriptions that exacerbate the problem. (The cover article in the May issue of JUCM will look at how one institution tackled this problem, as well.) Now the Centers for Medicare …

CDC: New Data Show Flu Shots Save Children’s Lives

Children whose parents ensure they get flu shots stand a significantly lower risk for death from influenza than children who are not vaccinated, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the CDC says between 2010 and 2014 flu vaccinations reduced the risk of flu-associated death by half among children with underlying high-risk medical conditions, and by nearly two-thirds among healthy children. The study, published in Pediatrics, is thought …

New Limits on Prescribing Opioids for Acute Pain

Ohio is placing new limits on the prescribing of opioid medications for acute pain, forbidding clinicians from writing more than a 7-day supply for adults, or a 5-day supply for minors (down from up to 90 days, currently). Prescribers will be allowed to override the acute pain limit if they identify a specific reason in their patients’ medical records, though this is not likely to apply in the urgent care setting. Further, the limits do …

Risk of Opioid Use Becoming ‘Long Term’ Rises Within Days

A new study published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reveals that the risk for long-term opioid use—defined as use that lasts for at least 1 year—increases within just a few days of starting to take a prescribed opioid drug. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at data reflecting the care of more than a million patients who received at least one opioid prescription between June 1, 2006, and September 1, …