Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Urgent Care Looks to Find its Identity through Gen Z and Millennials

Urgent message: Younger consumers’ healthcare preferences are significantly different than that of older consumers. Urgent care providers have a prime opportunity to meet the needs of Gen Z and Millennials by creating a new healthcare experience. Dan Stanek Introduction As everyday healthcare begins to deviate from the classic primary care model, the competition is just beginning in regard to which alternative provider will best suit consumers’ needs. Urgent care may be the current provider type …

Keeping Up with CMS Policies on Medicare Cards and Flu Vaccine Reimbursements

New Medicare Card Transition Period Ends December 31, 2019 As a result of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), in 2018 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began issuing new Medicare cards to all beneficiaries; unlike the previously existing cards, the new cards do not display the beneficiary’s Social Security number. CMS set up a schedule to mail out the new cards based on regions, to be completed by …

The Top 15 Occ Med Key Performance Indicators for Your Urgent Care Center

Max Lebow, MD, MPH, FACEP, FACPM Urgent message: Every medical practice follows certain key performance indicators. Here, we offer 15 that are essential to running a profitable occupational medicine business within an urgent care operation. There are a number of important key performance indicators (KPIs) that every urgent care, or any medical practice, follows—the most important being the bank balance at the end of the month. Most also follow basic practice measures such …

What Use Restrictions Can Landlords Impose on Urgent Care Facilities?

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Urgent message: Lease “exclusivity of use” provisions prohibiting competing urgent care centers, walk-in medical clinics, primary care offices, etc. are often used in leases to protect an urgent care center, but there are implications for both landlord and tenant. “Landlord agrees that no other space in the Fairland …

Inbound Referral Strategies for Urgent Care

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Urgent message: To successfully build patient volume, urgent care operators must ensure that their centers continually develop, nurture, and execute mutually beneficial referral relationships with local PCPs, specialists, and health systems. Among the many reasons hospitals and health systems continue to invest in urgent care is the value urgent care …

Employer Liability for Flu Infection

Urgent message: While urgent care centers benefit from exaggerated seasonal demand when a flu epidemic strikes, the risk is that the center’s own employees will get infected by contagious patients, incur medical costs, and lose time from work when they’re needed most. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer for Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. Introduction It’s not uncommon for an urgent care …

Conjunctivitis: When the Eyes Have It, How Many Patients Turn to Urgent Care?

“Care must be taken to differentiate bacterial infections from viral diseases and allergic conditions.”1 Things don’t get much plainer than that statement, quoted from an article published in Review Of Ophthalmology back in 2006. And yet, care is not always taken to differentiate bacterial infections of the eye from viral diseases and allergic conditions. That was made abundantly clear in this month’s cover article, Evaluation of Infectious Conjunctivitis by Clinical Evaluation and Novel Diagnostics (page …

Be Ready for the ICD-10-CM 2020 Updates

October 1, 2019 introduces 273 new diagnosis codes, 21 deactivated codes, and 35 code description revisions to the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification set, bringing the total ICD-10-CM code count to 72,184. The following describes those that are most relevant to the urgent care provider. Chapter 8: Diseases of the Ear and Mastoid Process (H60-H95) There is just a small change to note here, where code H81.4, “Vertigo of central origin” was …

Competing for Patients in a Digitally Connected World

Urgent message: In today’s tech-driven, digital-everything society, industry-leading consumer companies all leverage technology to reducing friction—ie, steps, obstacles, and unnecessary effort—in making their products and services fast, convenient, and accessible. The urgent care operation that can align with this growing trend and leverage technology to root out friction will win loyalty and patronage from today’s digitally native healthcare consumer. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care and is Practice …

The Millennial Conundrum: Fostering an Engaged Multigenerational Urgent Care Workforce

Urgent message: Are Millennial employees breathing fresh energy into the urgent care workplace or are they a new breed of workers who don’t go along with established workplace norms? Your perspective may influence how you fair in their ascendance. Rachel Sossoman, MSHR, SPHR, SHRM-SCP Introduction Millennials—Americans born between 1981 and 1996—became the largest demographic group in the U.S. workforce at 56 million strong in 2017; this year, they will overtake Baby Boomers as the largest …