Practice Management
Helping patients manage chronic conditions typically falls to primary care providers or specialists. At the same time, those people are just as likely as other patients to walk into your urgent care center—if not more so. CityMD and Mount Sinai Health System in New York City have teamed up to formalize a referral system that is designed to benefit all parties concerned. Mount Sinai will encourage patients to visit CityMD clinics when they have a …
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Urgent message: Just as urgent care has changed consumer attitudes and behaviors related to on-demand healthcare, One Medical is reinventing the primary care practice by emphasizing high-tech engagement, on-demand convenience, quality provider face time, and price transparency. If the rise of urgent care were a television drama, then primary care might be one of the villains. Unable to get an appointment in a timely manner—in some markets waiting weeks or months—and having to miss work …
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A new survey of hospital construction projects points to the ongoing growth of urgent care as one driver of a construction boom within the healthcare industry. In fact, urgent care, outpatient facilities, and medical specialty complexes are the key contributors to significant increases in new construction. Health Facilities Management’s 2016 Hospital Construction Survey indicated the boom is on track to continue, too; 35% of respondents said they expect to have a medical office project in …
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An influx of newly insured patients is just one reason emergency room traffic continues to go up in the age of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”), according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lack of access to primary care providers in general is especially problematic among Medicaid patients; often, they find access to be untimely, at a median wait time of 2 weeks for an appointment—if a conveniently …
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Hybrid health provider SSM Health Medical Group, which does business in the urgent care, hospital, primary care, and retail arenas, has signed an agreement to take over operation of 27 retail clinics housed in Walgreens drugstores in the St. Louis area. When the transition is complete next fall, the locations will be renamed SSM Health Express Clinic at Walgreens. Until then, it will be business as usual for those walk-in locations. Walgreens and SSM Health …
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Military members and their families covered under Tricare Prime, Tricare Prime Remote, or Tricare Young Adult–Prime will be allowed two urgent care visits without a referral per year, thanks to a pilot program starting May 23. Right now, beneficiaries need a referral before going to urgent care. Delays in getting appointments with a primary care provider have been a common complaint among military families for years, putting pressure on the Department of Defense to reconsider …
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Visits to urgent care resulted in lower costs and a lower rate of return visits compared with visits to the emergency room among younger Medicaid patients with low acuity symptoms, as reflected in a new study in published in Pediatrics. Researchers at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, MO and Children’s Hospital Association in Overland Park, KS looked at 5.9 million ED and urgent care visits by Medicaid-covered children between 2010 and 2012. …
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High deductibles may be keeping some patients from getting the care they really need—clearly a risk for them but also a possible impediment to healthcare reform in the U.S., according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Not mentioned is the fact that urgent care may offer a solution to at least one of those challenges by offering care whose cost is scaled to the appropriate acuity level. The study …
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