Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Urgent Care–Primary Care Partnership Lauded

A pair of medical practices—one urgent care and one primary care—received a municipal business award for a cooperative venture to make care as accessible as possible for their surrounding communities. Immediate Care Walk-In and CentraState Healthcare System forged an affiliation in 2015 to open a combination primary/urgent care facility in East Windsor, NJ. For their efforts, they received the town’s 2016 Business Award for Community Enhancement, based on polling of residents who were asked to …

New Data Show Same Diagnoses, Higher Costs at Freestanding EDs vs Urgent Care

Despite a growing stack of negative press clippings and legislative scrutiny, freestanding emergency rooms continue to take in patients off the street and charge them far more than they’d pay for the same services at urgent care centers. New data from four institutions in Texas reveal that mean out-of-pocket spending jumped 66% between 2012 and 2015 in the Lone Star State. Out-of-pocket costs grew by 38.5% at hospital-based EDs and by just 8.9% at urgent …

Urgent Care May Become Even More Important as Physician Shortage Approaches

By 2030, there will be a significant gap between the number of physicians who are practicing in the U.S. and the number needed to care for our aging population, according to new data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). At best, it would amount to a shortfall of 40,800 providers—at worst, 104,900, the association says. For primary care, the estimated shortage will be between 8,700 and 43,100 physicians by 2030. Emergency medicine, anesthesiology, …

The Top 10 Mistakes Hospitals Make in the Urgent Care Business

Introduction It should not be surprising that when hospital executives and personnel sit down to discuss issues and problems around population health, accountable care organization (ACO) integration, network development, cost containment, new product lines, hospital readmission rates, care coordination, and related topics they often arrive at hospital-centric and hospital-based solutions to solve them.1 As hospitals and hospital networks look to urgent care centers to address some of these issues through hospital/urgent care affiliations, joint ventures, …

Who Owns Patient Medical Records?

Urgent message: While historically there has been an understanding that patients own the information contained in their medical records, and that providers own the record itself, the current lack of a federal law governing the ownership of medical records poses a conundrum when those records are stored electronically. New challenges demand innovative solutions—often in the form of new technologies that make life easier. Certainly technology has advanced healthcare to improve and lengthen our lives. Yet, …

Demand for Medical Assistants Will Outstrip Supply by 2024

Medical assistants (MAs) are the core of urgent care’s clinical support workforce (as noted in Cost Effective Staffing with Medical Assistants in the January, 2017 edition of JUCM; see https://www.jucm.com/cost-effective-staffing-medical-assistants/). However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for MAs is expected to outstrip supply over the next decade, just as the aging baby-boom population will increase demand for physician services—especially in the primary care setting, where the bulk of MAs work. For urgent …

Can ePrescribing Help Urgent Care Fight Against Opioid Addiction?

The episodic nature of the urgent care setting makes it a popular target for opioid addicts “doctor shopping” for someone new to write prescriptions. As such, urgent care clinicians must remain always-vigilant for ways to help stem rampant opioid addiction. One tool that’s built into the urgent care electronic medical record systems (eprescribing) can be a valuable weapon in that fight. Where a paper script—or, worse, a whole pad—can be lost or stolen, an electronic …

Managing Your Urgent Care Center’s Emotional Culture

Urgent message: As in most business settings, urgent care operators emphasize the importance of a positive cognitive culture. Given the close quarters and frequent interaction among colleagues and patients, however, emotional culture can also have a strong influence on quality of care, patient and employee satisfaction—and even the success of the operation. [The following summary of the January-February, 2016 Harvard Business Review Article spotlights how organizations are slowly realizing the importance of managing the emotional …

Wanted: One Doctor to Answer the Call of the Rockies

If you have a dollar in your pocket right now and would relish the opportunity to practice in your own clinic in the Rocky Mountains, Park County, CO is waiting to fulfill your dreams. There’s a five-room clinic there that has been vacant for over 2 years, leaving some 16,000 residents without a local facility that can set their broken bones, prescribe antibiotics for their children’s earaches, or even provide follow-up for chronic conditions. Park …

Can a DFW Airport Urgent Care Location Take Off?

Code 3 is gambling that opening a pair of acute care facilities at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)—an urgent care center and a separate freestanding emergency room—will help profits soar. However, some industry experts are skeptical that the airport has the right stuff. Code 3 says the clinic should open in August, while the goal for the ED is to open by the end of the year. While urgent care centers in airport locations are …