Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Open for Debate: Minimum Operating Hours for Urgent Care

URGENT MESSAGE: Urgent care’s value proposition is “access,” which includes walk-in availability whenever patients have a medical need. However, could using some minimum operating hours as a defining feature of “urgent care” unintentionally restrict access for tens of millions of Americans living in historically underserved communities with population density insufficient to support opening seven days per week and 3,000 hours per year? Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of JUCM—The Journal of …

The Pros and Cons of Acquiring Accounts Receivables in Urgent Care Transactions

URGENT MESSAGE: Unlike most retail and service businesses in which customer transactions result in immediate cash in the register, the nature of insurance and government billing in urgent care creates accounts receivable, which can be a complicating factor when buying or selling an urgent care practice. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Practice Management Editor of JUCM—The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, a member of the Board of Directors of the Urgent Care Association of …

Janitorial and Maintenance Roundtable: Best Practices for Managing Environmental Services

Urgent message: Every urgent care center must have a plan to clean and maintain its physical facility. In this JUCM-exclusive panel discussion, industry leaders share their insights on selecting an environmental services contractor, negotiating pricing, and maintaining service levels. Urgent care is often considered a blind product because patients generally lack the formal training necessary to assess the quality of the actual medical services delivered. As a result, satisfaction or dissatisfaction is determined in large …