Practice Management
We all know emergency room waiting areas are choked with patients who could be treated just as well—and in less time for less money—in an urgent care center. That makes it all the more difficult for patients who really need to be there to be seen in a reasonable amount of time. Now Thomas Health System in Charleston, WV, thinks it has found a way to make people think twice about heading to the ED …
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Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore has added its voice to the chorus decrying excessive costs for patients visiting hospital emergency rooms for episodic care. What’s more, new data it just revealed indicates the odds of getting overcharged are greater if you’re a minority or uninsured. Researchers considered the billing records for more than 12,000 U.S. hospital-based emergency physicians, finding that on average adult patients in the ED are charged 340% more than what Medicare allows …
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Going to the emergency room for a simple sore throat will cost Georgians who get their insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia as of July 1, when a new rule designed to cut unnecessary healthcare costs goes into effect. In a nutshell, it demands that patients choose another care setting unless they have a true emergency—urgent care being the most likely source, given the difficulty many find when trying to make timely appointments …
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Massachusetts’ secretary of Health and Human Services is on record as saying urgent care is ideally suited to help reduce overcrowding emergency rooms, at least in Boston. As a guest on Herald Radio’s Morning Meeting program, Marylou Sudders referenced a recent report that patients are waiting nearly an hour to be seen, on average, in the EDs at Boston Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her proposed solution would be to have more urgent …
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Brooklyn (NY) Borough President Eric Adams has a message for basketball fans, concert goers, and cinephiles in his native environs: Stay out of the emergency room unless you absolutely have to be there; the urgent care center is often a much better, faster, and less costly option. Adams is so keen on that message that he recorded a series of public service announcements that play in the Barclays Center arena and high-end movie theaters in …
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A pair of recent news stores add up to a cautionary tale for clinicians inclined to assume ailments commonly identified in the urgent care setting pose no serious threats. One case resulted in the partial amputation of a child’s leg, while the other cost a child her life. In Akron, OH a 6-year-old girl’s strep throat was followed by a flu diagnosis. When her left leg began to swell and she begged her parents not …
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Urgent care has taken root, among other reasons, based on its capability to treat patients who otherwise would be sitting (and waiting) in local hospital emergency rooms with nonemergent illness and injury. This benefits not only our industry and the patients who need urgent care, but also those patients who will find a less-crowded ED than they might find in a world without urgent care. And some of them—particularly those covered by Medicare and Medicaid, …
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Texas legislators and the Dallas Morning News have both joined the chorus of voices calling for greater regulation of how freestanding emergency rooms present themselves and bill patients. Recent news articles and editorials in the newspaper warn consumers about the high cost of mistaking a freestanding emergency room for an urgent care center, citing a $3,000 bill for out-of-network emergency room services vs a $200 charge for the same services at an urgent care center. …
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Typically, going to the emergency room costs a lot more than a trip to an urgent care center for the same complaint. You’d think insurers would be invested in getting their plan members to recognize the difference and make informed decisions accordingly. The chief medical officer of Innovation Health agrees, and revealed a “decision tree” to help patients choose wisely—and economically. Sunil Budhrani, MD, an emergency room doctor for close to 20 years who went …
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New data suggest that efforts to educate patients on when it’s appropriate to go to an urgent care center vs the emergency room need to continue, if not increase. Basically, the survey from CityMD shows too many are not selecting the appropriate setting for immediate care. More than 2,000 Americans 18 and older were asked which setting would be most appropriate for immediate care in eight separate scenarios, from having a child with a 104⁰ …
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