Practice Management
Influenza tends to get all the headlines at this time of year, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only seasonal complaint patients are likely to present with at urgent care centers. Frigid temperatures and icy roadways and sidewalks are sending many patients to healthcare providers in multiple settings. Local newspapers in the Davenport, IA area recently noted that nearly 300 people were treated for falls and other weather-related hazards over the space of a couple …
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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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Urgent care clinicians and owners are ratcheting up efforts to enlighten their potential patient base on the benefits and value of urgent care. Local media outlets have been awash recently in physician-penned articles explaining what presenting complaints can be managed in the urgent care setting vs those that truly need the resources of an emergency room. Now some operators are taking their message to the streets by conducting live patient education seminars. Case in point: …
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Eleven children have died from flu or flu-related illness this year, and roughly 20,000 are hospitalized every year in the U.S. thanks to influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And yet the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, 2016 reveals that even 14% of parents who had their children immunized against flu this year believe it is “less important” than other childhood vaccines; perhaps less surprisingly, 59% of …
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Local business owners should be made aware that occupational medicine providers may be able to prevent more than the flu this season. With more than 11 million workdays—and $7 billion—lost annually to the flu according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, healthy employees mean a healthy bottom line in very real terms. Small businesses, especially those engaged in manufacturing where having a worker down with the flu could significantly diminish production for days …
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