Practice Management
Urgent message: Unlike many other practice models, urgent care must appeal directly to the customer to stay “top of mind” and be the first option the patient considers when a need arises. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc Urgent care is a healthcare delivery channel built around the needs of consumers – “retail,” from a marketing perspective – with convenient locations, evening and weekend hours, walk-in service, the capability to treat a range of illness or …
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Urgent message: New data reveal that urgent care compares favorably with other practice environments when it comes to select key quality indicators. Robin M. Weinick, PhD, Steffanie J. Bristol, BS, and Catherine M. DesRoches, DrPH Developing methods to assess the quality of healthcare in any clinical area is a complicated affair. Many individuals have devoted large parts of their careers to quality measurement, and several national organizations—such as The Joint Commission and the National Quality …
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Urgent message: Efforts to define and accurately count urgent care centers in the U.S.—which may be crucial to the industry’s continued growth—are ongoing, and will require the commitment of trade organizations and individual urgent care owners alike. Robin M. Weinick, PhD, Steffanie J. Bristol, BS, Jessica E. Marder, and Catherine M. DesRoches, DrPH Our quest to provide accurate, scientifically rigorous benchmarking data for urgent care centers began with the decision to conduct a survey. Before …
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Urgent message: Making the best use of the space you have is not just a matter of comfort and esthetics; an efficient floor plan contributes to providing proper—and cost-effective—care and services. Patrice Pash, RN, BSN, COHC So you’ve signed the lease or purchased the property and you’re sitting there staring at this huge empty shell, dreaming of the potential finished space. What will it look like? How many exam rooms do you need? What additional …
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Urgent message: Patients will return again and again—and tell their friends, too—if your center’s manager and employees are unfailingly courteous, com petent, and thorough. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, Experity If you’re planning to own and operate an urgent care center, you’re probably not thinking about managing an administrative office. Instead, you envision yourself hurrying between exam rooms, suturing cuts, setting fractures, and dispensing orders. Digging your way out of paperwork, refereeing staff disputes, tracking …
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Urgent message: Adding a corporate wellness component to a UCOM initiative fosters better relationships with clients and good care for their employees—as well as more business for the practice. Donna Lee Gardner, RN, MS, MBA Corporate wellness is one of the five basic service lines an urgent care occupational medicine (UCOM) clinic is advised to offer in order to position itself as a truly comprehensive resource for employers and their employees. Other primary occupational medicine …
Read MoreUrgent message: Though patient waits are often unavoidable, understanding and addressing the causes can help mitigate negative impact on the patient and the practice. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, Experity The term “urgent care” conveys immediate medical attention, so it’s no surprise that the greatest determinant of customer satisfaction for an urgent care center is how quickly patients are treated and released. But how does a busy walk-in clinic which must be prepared to handle …
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Urgent message: A loss management/injury management product line will further broaden a practice’s range of services (and revenue sources) while also creating a platform for referral of new patients. Donna Lee Gardner, RN, MS, MBA As discussed previously in JUCM, a clinic that seeks to broaden its clinical services—and, thus, its revenue streams—by offering comprehensive urgent care occupational medicine (UCOM) services will provide access to five distinct, but complementary, product lines: • health surveillance • …
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Urgent message: Appropriate attention to place, product, price, promotion, people, and quality help ensure the right approach to facilitating the success of your practice. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, Experity Bartenders in British pubs have a custom of reminding eager patrons to “mind their Ps and Qs”—to watch how many pints and quarts they consume, so as to avoid creating a tab they cannot pay. To assure a satisfactory return on their investment, urgent care …
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Urgent message: The financial health of your practice depends on a balanced approach that takes into account both increasing income and reducing expenses. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, Experity From an economic perspective, the independent urgent care owner/operator has a dual goal: to build the long-term value of the medical practice while maximizing cash that can be taken out of the business in the form of income. To achieve both of these goals—to expand revenues …
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