Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Thinking Outside the Box to Bring Urgent Care to the Patient

Alan A. Ayers, MBA, Macc Urgent Message: Urgent care is a consumer-driven phenomenon, and physician entrepreneurs continue to evolve the delivery of urgent care services in response to changing consumer preferences, both inside and beyond the brick-and-mortar facility. Citation: Ayers A. Thinking outside the box to bring urgent care to the patient. J Urgent Care Med. 2024;18(4): 31-33. While unregulated by most states, the term “urgent care” historically has come to mean a base offering …

Charting with Purpose: Precision Strategies for Accurate Coding and Malpractice Defense

Jeff Willis, MD Urgent Message: A well-told story explaining your thought process during a patient encounter will contain all the elements required for accurate coding. Attorneys are less likely to question care when a logical and complete story is clearly documented. Citation: Willis J. Charting with Purpose: Precision Strategies for Accurate Coding and Malpractice Defense. J Urgent Care Med. 2024; 18(4) 13-16. As a medical legal consultant, I have learned medical malpractice claims are an …

Quadriceps Pyomyositis After Aspiration of Patellar Bursitis: A Case Report

Urgent Message: Deep tissue infections are possible considerations for diabetic patients presenting to urgent care with muscle tenderness who recently have had joint or bursal aspirations or injections. Citation: Mati M. Quadriceps Pyomyositis After Aspiration of Patellar Bursitis: A Case Report. J Urgent Care Med. 2024;18(4):25-27. Key Words: quadriceps myositis, diabetes, patellar bursitis, infectious disease Abstract Introduction Infectious myositis and pyomyositis are uncommon and therefore easily overlooked with serious potential complications of bursal aspirations. Clinical …

The Importance of Providing Clinical History for Radiology Studies in the Urgent Care Setting

Morgan P. McBee, MD, CIIP; Leah S. McBee, MD Urgent Message: Urgent care clinicians need to provide relevant clinical history for radiology orders to ensure that the correct exam gets performed, an accurate ICD-10 code can be assigned for billing, and that radiologists are able to provide high-quality reports that contribute to timely and appropriate patient care in the urgent care setting. Citation: McBee M, McBee L. The Importance of Providing Clinical History for Radiology …

Flu Season Begins For Urgent Care

In late November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted that the number of healthcare visits related to influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was particularly high among children, causing concern in communities about this “tripledemic” of respiratory illness. According to Experity data, the first week of October ushered in flu season for urgent care, when positivity rates for the three viruses among all urgent care center visits began to rise.1 Since …

18-Year-Old With Painful, Eroded Lesions

An 18-year-old man presented to urgent care with fever, pain in multiple joints, and a back rash that had been progressive for the last few weeks. On examination of the back, there were multiple painful erythematous and violaceous papules and nodules as well as several large pustules. Some of the lesions were eroded and crusted. The patient reported that he recently started an intensive bodybuilding regimen with a 3 month use of anabolic-androgenic steroid/testosterone prior …

Abstracts in Urgent Care January 2024

Can Artificial Intelligence Be Used as a Behavioral Health Tool for Adolescents? Take Home Point: Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) may have potential as a tool to help address the unmet needs of adolescent behavioral health treatment. Citation: Opel D, Kious B, Cohen I. AI as a Mental Health Therapist for Adolescents. JAMA Pediatr. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.4215 Relevance: Mental health issues among adolescents have been rapidly increasing in prevalence. The increasing need for adolescent mental healthcare has led …

Rural Residents More Likely to Seek Emergency Migraine Treatment

Rural patients were more likely to present at the emergency department (ED) for migraine than those who live in non-rural areas, an epidemiologic study of 810,388 visits showed. Rural patients were more likely to receive opioid analgesics in the ED as well. Med Page Today reported on the study results from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists midyear meeting. In rural areas in 2019, the rate of ED utilization for migraine was 41.8 per 10,000 …

Patients Less Likely to Follow Up After Telehealth Visits

Your follow-up recommendation for a patient seen with a telehealth visit is often a diagnostic test or specialty referral. Completion of those follow-up recommendations—“diagnostic loop closure”—seems to be lacking, according to a study in JAMA Network Open. The study involved 4,133 diagnostic tests and referrals (colonoscopies, cardiac stress tests, and dermatology referrals) from March 2020 through December 2021 at 2 primary care sites. Results showed that 58% of in-person visit orders were completed within the …

Statins Reduce Risks for Women Using Hormone Therapy

When physicians prescribe hormone therapy (HT) for perimenopausal women, many warn their patients of the increased risk for venous thromboembolism (VTE). However, knowing that a large number of patients also take statin medications to prevent cardiovascular issues, it would make sense to study the effect statins may have on the risk of VTE for women using HT. A new study in JAMA Network Open did that very thing and found the risk of VTE was …