Practice Management
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been following the progress of a tax bill that would have imposed an 8.75% tax on urgent care charges in Massachusetts. Thanks at least in part to strong lobbying against the bill by the Urgent Care Association and the North East Regional Urgent Care Association (NERUCA), among other concerned parties, the bill was stalled as the legislature’s 2018 General Session came to a close. If the bill had gone …
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The Urgent Care Association, long a proponent of sound antibiotic stewardship as a safeguard against drug-resistant bacteria, is working with the George Washington University Antibiotic Resistance Center on an initiative to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. One key element, through the College of Urgent Care Medicine, is an antibiotic stewardship toolkit based on the Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. UCA also just took part in—and sponsored—a …
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Among the proposed changes in the newly released 2019 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) is a new urgent care specialty measure set. The Urgent Care Association and the College of Urgent Care Medicine had asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to include 12 specific measures, 11 of which were included in CMS’s proposal. The creation of a proper set is expected to help urgent care providers select measures when fulfilling the quality component …
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Physician burnout is at least as dangerous as unsafe workplace conditions when it comes to medical errors, according to a new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. In fact, it indicates that physicians with burnout are more than twice as likely to self-report a medical error compared with those without burnout. The potential consequences of that are dramatic; existing data show that med errors are a factor in as many as 200,000 deaths annually in …
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The Urgent Care Association (UCA) and the North East Regional Urgent Care Association (NERUCA) have stepped up their joint efforts to lobby against proposed legislation in Massachusetts that it says would wreak havoc not only on urgent care operators, but the entire state healthcare system. No longer content to simply urge interested parties to contact their legislators to make their feelings about the legislation known, both groups have gone a step further by staging a …
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When they asked prolific criminal Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he allegedly replied simply, “That’s where the money is.” To flip the question, if all your patients (and prospective new patients) are on social media, why aren’t you doing more to seek them out there? Answers on how to remedy that will be offered in a free webinar to be hosted by the Urgent Care Association (UCA) on Thursday, July 19, 1–2 pm, Central. …
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They say it’s never a bad time for a good idea. And right now, opening a new urgent care center is a very good idea—and you can discover why, and how to move forward, by attending the next webinar hosted by the Urgent Care Association on Thursday, June 14, from 1 to 2 pm, Central. In Now is a Great Time to Open a New Urgent Care, speaker David Stern, MD will walk attendees through …
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With international travel and increasing levels of antibiotic resistance both on the upswing, helping patients who present with any variety of infections has never been more challenging for the urgent care clinician. The Urgent Care Association will host a webinar on the subject on Thursday, June 7, from 1 to 2 pm, Central. Speaker Lori Swanson, RN, MHSA, CHC, compliance and qualify officer for Physicians Immediate Care in Illinois and Indiana, will review best practices …
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As noted in the latest benchmarking data on the urgent care industry, the very nature of on-demand care has changed since the birth of the Urgent Care Association of America. To demonstrate that this is not a time for “business as usual,” UCAOA announced at its recent annual convention in Las Vegas that it’s changing its name to the Urgent Care Association (UCA) and expanding its offerings to include new providers and technologies that are …
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The business of urgent care may be taking care of patients, but that business won’t last long without sound financial practices. Understanding that the money coming in has to be more than the money going out doesn’t take a whole lot of acumen; truly grasping how to maximize the process for the current health and future growth of the business is another thing, however. The Urgent Care Association has invited speaker Dan Phillips to share …
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