Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

#MeToo in the Urgent Care Center: When the Perpetrator is a Patient

Urgent message: Most urgent care operators are well aware of the need for strong, clear policies on sexual harassment among team members. Your responsibility to protect your employees doesn’t end there, though. Situations in which the harasser is a patient present unique challenges—and consequences. Suzanne C. Jones and Roma B. Patel INTRODUCTION The #MeToo movement may have begun with high-profile actresses in Hollywood publicly acknowledging years of inappropriate behavior at the hands of powerful men …

Physician Assignment Searches: Urgent Care is on the Rise, Hospitals on the Decline

This is an interesting time to be in the healthcare field. We keep hearing (and are starting to see the effects of) a serious shortage in available physicians across multiple settings, but most direly in primary care. To compensate, many practices are relying more on the skills and high-level training of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, now known collectively as advanced practice providers (APPs). At the same time, consumers continue to demonstrate a growing preference …

Utilizing Credit Card Pre-authorization to Optimize Revenue

With the continued rise of the cost of healthcare and higher out-of-pocket costs to the patient, urgent care centers are finding more patients struggling to pay their deductible. The process of billing patients for deductibles and other patient responsibility can be a long, drawn out procedure resulting in significant costs, delays, write-offs and slower collection time for the urgent care center. The traditional method of sending out patient statements and waiting and hoping for patients …

The Consequences of a Medical Provider Quitting Without Notice

Urgent message: Patients and communities rely on access to urgent care to augment primary care shortages and decant over-crowded Emergency Departments. A provider who quits without notice causes scheduling disruptions which could be considered “patient abandonment.” Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Chief Executive Officer of Velocity Urgent Care, LLC and is Practice Management Editor of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine Once a medical provider has accepted a patient into her practice, she is …

Creating the ‘Ideal’ Urgent Care Experience

Urgent message: For owner-operators truly committed to creating “the ideal urgent care experience”—a thriving operating model that benefits patients, employees, and investors alike —a commitment to operational excellence, a perfecting of the patient experience, and the embrace of an empowered, engaged employee culture must form the bedrock principles of their practice. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Driven largely by millennials and Gen Xer’s who place a premium on convenience, alongside Baby Boomers utilizing their newly …

Urgent Care Is an Appropriate Setting for Any Age—But What Ages Are Showing Up the Most?

This issue of JUCM, without any plan to do so, demonstrates the age range of patients who realize the value of high-quality, relatively low-cost, convenient care on a walk-in basis. In the preceding pages, there’s an in-depth report on how to ensure you’re prepared to provide the appropriate care for a child who’s been vomiting for previously unexplained reasons. Abstracts in Urgent Care features analysis of articles on topics of greater concern in midlife (the …

Optimize Revenue with Improved Claims Denials Management

No matter how diligent your billing staff is about billing charges out correctly, it is inevitable that you will receive claim denials from payers, whether they are justified or not. A claim denial means that no payment is being received for the service, and unless you have someone (or technology) analyze the denial to determine if the denial is appropriate or not, you will not receive payment for the service(s) rendered . Denials come in …

Telemedicine in Urgent Care—Yay, Nay, or Too Soon to Say?

If you read this month’s Urgent Perspectives column (page 1), you were treated to a dynamic conversation between two urgent care leaders about the relative merits—and potential drawbacks—of utilizing telemedicine in the urgent care setting. The disparate opinions presented there are reflected in the larger urgent care marketplace, as well. The Urgent Care Association’s 2018 Benchmarking Report notes an interesting dichotomy: Only 1.58% of the sampling reflected in the report say they provide telemedicine—a drop …

Get Ready for the Next Round of Changes to E/M Guidelines

The American Medical Association has announced it is taking the first steps towards revising the new Evaluation and Management (E/M) guidelines that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced last year to reduce the administrative burden on clinicians with the Patients over Paperwork initiative.1 Effective as early as January 1, 2021, office visit Level 1 E/M code 99201 will be deleted. Additionally, while the history and exam will be required to be reviewed …

How Best to Manage an ‘At-Will’ Termination

Urgent message: In most states, employment is at will—meaning that an employer can fire or terminate an employee at any time, for any reason that is not against the law. Even so, the employment at-will doctrine isn’t a license for an employer to fire employees at the drop of a hat. There are still critical considerations for urgent care operators to heed when terminating a provider or staff member. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is …