Practice Management
Oklahoma is the latest state to report an outbreak of mumps, joining Washington, New York, Arkansas, and Missouri in what’s become the heaviest season for confirmed cases in years. Washington, New York, and Arkansas continue to report new cases in multiple counties, while Missouri’s case load seems to have leveled off, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not surprisingly, most cases in every state are clustered around school populations, though …
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The evolution of electronic health records (or, more specifically, the data they house) pairs well—and not so coincidentally—with the growth of urgent care over the past decade. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sees electronic data collection as having greater application and significance than simply allowing patient histories to be readily accessible, though. The CDC is working out the optimal way to foster sharing of healthcare data across literal borders to identify—and, hopefully, …
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Americans who have heeded the advice of healthcare providers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to get a flu shot are in the minority so far this season. Only 40% of patients have been immunized according to the CDC, leaving the majority at risk of both getting the flu and of passing it along to others. Many people aged 50–64 years are among those most at risk, as they’re just starting to …
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Urgent message: Increasingly, Americans do not know their human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) serostatus. Implementing rapid HIV testing can allow your center to play a key role in identifying new cases of HIV and linking patients to care. Abstract Background: Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that an increasing number of Americans do not know their human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) serostatus. The CDC recommends routine screening for all patients 13 to …
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Influenza sits alone as the only infectious disease among the top 10 causes of death in the United States, proving more work needs to be done to ensure everyone who needs a flu shot gets one. Urgent care is ideally suited to saving lives through prevention in this area, being an increasingly popular destination for people without a “medical home” and among newly insured patients. Influenza and pneumonia are listed as the seventh leading causes …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been very active in pushing for more responsible antibiotic prescribing lately. Now they’ve issued more formal direction in the form of guidelines for antibiotic prescribing in outpatient settings, offering four stewardship “pillars” for prescribers to follow. CDC’s Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship, published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), recommends that outpatient facilities like urgent care centers demonstrate dedication to and accountability for optimizing …
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Calling it “an emerging threat,” the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging healthcare providers in all settings to “act now to better understand, contain, and stop the spread of” infection caused by drug-resistant Candida auris. CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, notes that C auris can be fatal, making the new drug-resistant strain especially concerning. The CDC recently issued its first report of 13 cases in the United States (in …
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Last year’s relatively mild flu season is likely indicative of two things: The vaccine produced was a good match for the prevalent strains of influenza, and this year’s season could be a doozy. The latter point would be borne out by history, which shows that “good” flu seasons are most often followed by “bad” flu seasons. That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions continues to hammer home the message that early vaccination is …
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Urgent Message: Tobacco-related illness costs the U.S. healthcare system billions in preventable medical expenses, yet many employees of urgent care centers continue to light up. It may be time for your urgent care center to address the issue of employee smoking by offering incentives for smoking cessation. Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc is Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for Practice Velocity, LLC and is Practice Management Editor of JUCM—The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. A …
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Reducing the rate of antibiotic resistance—let alone treating patients effectively and efficiently—means prescribing the right drug for the right pathogen at the outset. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen that way, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Pew Charitable Trusts and other public health and medical experts to determine how much U.S. outpatient antibiotic use is inappropriate and to set national targets for improving antibiotic prescribing. They found that at least …
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