Practice Management
Urgent message: After a brief hiatus during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of new sexually transmitted infections has resumed at epidemic rates in the United States. With many specialty STI clinics having closed, urgent care may be better positioned than ever to help curb their spread. Glenn Harnett, MD Citation: Harnett G. The rising importance of urgent care in the fight against the STI epidemic. J Urgent Care Med. 2022;16(3):15-20. Key words: …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling for a “renewed commitment from all players” to fight sharp increases in sexually transmitted diseases. In the past year alone, more than 2 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were reported in the U.S. While 1.6 million of those cases were chlamydia, there were 470,000 cases of gonorrhea and nearly 28,000 cases of primary and secondary syphilis. Calling STDs “a growing threat,” the agency stressed …
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Rates of infection with sexually transmitted disease are up. If you practice in urgent care, you probably don’t need statistics to know that, as many patients concerned about possibly having an STD find comfort in the relative anonymity of the urgent care center, and opt to get tested there instead of in their “regular” doctor’s office. Now the makers of “home tests” are taking aim at these same prospective patients with marketing messages that promote …
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An urgent care center in Los Angeles is offering to check qualified patients for sexually transmitted disease at no cost. The plan is part of Vermont Urgent Care’s goal to expand their offerings to include sexual health services—but it’s also a great way to introduce themselves to patients who may not have visited the clinic before. Urgent care centers, in general, have become popular among patients who think they may need to get checked for …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has again updated guidance related to protecting the public from Zika virus, saying there’s evidence that a man infected with Zika can sexually transmit the virus to a female partner even if he has no symptoms. It cites the case of a woman who had unprotected sex with a man who’d recently returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic, where mosquito-born Zika has been confirmed. The …
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and certain state health departments are looking into 14 new cases of Zika virus to determine if they could have been transmitted through sexual contact. In each case, a man who had traveled to an area where Zika has been confirmed developed symptoms within two weeks of his female sexual partner becoming ill. While the main health concern is that several of the women are pregnant and Zika …
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