Practice Management
Joanne P. Parker, MD Urgent message: High blood pressure is a common incidental finding in urgent care. Distinguishing patients who may need treatment from those who should be advised to follow up for further evaluation is well within the urgent care provider’s field of expertise. Click Here to download the article PDF Patients often present to urgent care with concerns about their blood pressure readings. Additionally, high blood pressure (BP) is frequently a very incidental …
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The patient is a 75-year-old female who presents with dizziness and a slow heartbeat. She has a history of hypertension. View the ECG taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case begins on the next page.
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A 49-year-old woman presents with a lesion that developed over her right toe over the past 4 weeks. It is painless, but has begun to bleed. On examination, a smooth, pink, friable, eroded nodule is seen on the nail bed. View the image taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the next page.
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A 69-year-old man presents with “neck pain” after a care crash. Lateral and oblique views of the lower cervical spine are ordered. View the image taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the following page.
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Heather Real Click Here to download the article PDF In the journey of an urgent care visit, where does the patient story begin? Is it when the patient walks through the door, or did it start when the patient was still at home Googling “urgent care near me” on their phone? It is likely neither of these. The patient journey to your urgent care actually begins before they even have a sniffle, fever, or injury; …
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How Long Should We Prescribe Antibiotics for Pediatric UTI? Take-Home Point: Children receiving 5 days of antibiotics for urinary tract infection (UTI) had a higher rate of treatment failure that children receiving 10-day courses. However, absolute treatment failure rates were low in both groups. Citation: Zaoutis T, Shaikh N, Fisher B, et. al. Short-Course Therapy for Urinary Tract Infections in Children: The SCOUT Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatr. 2023 Jun 26; e231979. Relevance: There have …
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Joshua Russell, MD, MSc, FCUCM, FACEP Click Here to download the article PDF Sophie was back with another one of her kids in tow. This was the fifth time in a month. I could almost hear my staff roll their eyes when she walked through the door. Even though she was a denizen of the clinic, I was about to meet her for the first time because I usually covered other sites. Although I was …
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On paper (so to speak), in-office prescribing in the urgent care center would seem to be a no-brainer for all concerned: patients could avoid the time-consuming hassles of navigating the retail drugstore morass and head straight home with their medication, and providers could be assured that their patients got the right medication in a timely manner and could be the responsible parties to answer any questions they may have—all while collecting a modest profit. That’s …
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Urgent message: The use of all-inclusive kits with compact, table-top analyzers provides a rapid quantification of HbA1c levels in patients. The use of these tests for in-house screening has the potential to increase the diagnoses of early or asymptomatic diabetes in young adults and under-served or overlooked populations. Jay H. Shubrook, DO; Jane M. Caldwell, PhD; and Lindsey E. Fish, MD Citation: Shubrook JH, Caldwell JM, Fish LE. HbA1c as screening/diagnosis for early or asymptomatic …
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The patient is a 55-year-old woman who presents with sudden-onset wrist pain in her right wrist. She reports that she is right-handed and played pickleball the day before onset, and that she is an avid bicyclist, but denies falling or experiencing any pain in the course of those activities. She says she “just woke up with it hurting.” View the image taken and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the …
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