Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Dealing with the Disruptive Doctor

Urgent message: When a physician is dubbed “Tom the Terror,” turning a blind eye can send patients and staff heading for the exit, wreck your reputation, and spark a lawsuit. Here’s what to do instead.LEONARD D. GOODSTEIN, PHD, ABPP, and JOHN SHUFELDT, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP Tom P. is a competent, board-certified emergency physician. He is liked and respected by his patients. But Tom‘s relationships with staffers at the urgent care center where he still …

Enhancing Profits with Immigration Physicals

Urgent message: Conducting immigration physicals can be surprisingly lucrative. These relatively high-priced, cash-only visits incur no insurance billing or accounts receivable carrying costs. And because they are scheduled, ebbs and flows in patient volume can be leveled. Here’s how it works. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity The success of a new urgent care center in a community requires a change in consumer behavior, with a sufficient number of residents shifting their utilization from …

Competitive Analysis to Stand Above the Crowd

Urgent message: Providing high-quality care and good service is not necessarily enough to attract and keep patients, especially if those patients can take their pick from among several urgent care centers. More and more, urgent care operators need to be aware of how their competitors operate. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity All too often, urgent care entrepreneurs operate in a vacuum. They feel that if they offer a well-appointed facility with good signage, …

Bridging the Management Divide: Understanding Physician Leadership

Urgent message: Physicians are trained for clinical care; administrators are trained for business management. These differences can create conflict regarding how healthcare is (and should be) managed. So what happens when the physician is the administrator? Trevor Rohm, MD, MS Introduction There is a philosophical division between physicians and healthcare management/administration. There are a variety of causes for this great divide, but understanding how physicians think, act, listen, and learn can provide invaluable insight into …

Agencies Can Extend Clinical Recruiting and Staffing Capabilities

Urgent message: Medical staffing agencies extend an urgent care center’s recruiting and staffing capabilities with solutions to fill all operating hours with qualified providers. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Practice Velocity Introduction The United States faces a shortage of primary care and emergency medicine physicians – the provider force feeding urgent care. When an urgent care center has an insufficient number of providers to adequately cover its schedule, the patient experience suffers due to extended …

Beyond Vital Signs: Managing by Metrics for Optimal Health of Your Practice

Urgent message: Establishing a system of metrics and ‘dashboards’ allows the urgent care operator to quantify key success factors and company values that may otherwise be impossible to measure. Laurel Stoimenoff Metric – Function: noun \’me-trik\ Def: A standard of measurement – Merriam Webster Online Dictionary. “What gets measured gets managed.” This pearl applies not only to the behemoths like General Electric, but also to a single-site urgent care center. A 2008 survey by the …

The Case for Relationship based Clerical Care

Urgent message: Embedding a clerical component within a relationship-based care approach has been shown to improve both financial outcomes and patient satisfaction. Noel Clinton, BS Introduction When we hear the term “relationship-based care,” we tend to think first about the relationship between the clinical staff and the patient. However, a prospective program as Bassett Healthcare in Cooperstown, NY has shown that positive patient care and improved financial outcomes are also a result of developing a …

Protecting the Urgent Care Center from Sexual Harassment Claims

Urgent message: Sexual harassment claims can be costly for an urgent care operator, not tomention ruinous to a center’s reputation. An urgent care center should protect itself by having firm policies and procedures in place to prevent and resolve sexual harassment issues. Alan Ayers, MA, MAcc, Experity Sexual harassment emerged as a major human resources issue in the 1990s. Victims of alleged sexual harassment – who can be men or women – sometimes find sympathetic …

Building Urgent Care Referral Relationships Part 2: EDs, PCPs, and Specialists

Urgent message: Forging solid relationships with other clinicians in emergency, primary care, or specialty settings can help facilitate two-way referrals and prove beneficial to all parties involved – including patients. The second of two parts. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Overbooked primary care officers and time-consuming (not to mention costly) trips to the emergency room leave many patients frustrated and feeling they have no place left to turn when a medical condition requires immediate attention …

Building Urgent Care Referral Relationships: Pharmacies and Retail Host Clinics

Urgent message: Viewing other community healthcare providers (e.g., pharmacists) or even possible competitors (e.g., retail clinics) as referral sources can increase revenues and bolster the urgent care center’s place in the healthcare system. The first of two parts. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Urgent Care has evolved to the point that it is a vital part of a community’s healthcare infrastructure, offering access when primary care appointments are unavailable and relief when emergency rooms are …