Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Competitive Edge: The Importance of Taking Accurate Vitals

Urgent message: Recording thorough and accurate vital signs supports the urgent care physician in asking the right questions of the patient’s history of present illness, guides the physician in the physical exam, and thus is essential in reaching an accurate diagnosis and devising an effective treatment plan. Imagine you are a medical assistant on duty in a busy urgent care center. A patient walks in, and you check him in. You ask his height and …

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 …

My Patient Wants to Ruin My Reputation—Now How Do I Fix It?

Urgent message: When a patient says, ‘I had a bad experience,’ you should hear, ‘I know how you can improve your service.’ Adopt that mindset and you’ll start to welcome even negative feedback—and learn to use it to your advantage. Did you know there are some urgent care centers who live to get patient complaints? Before we delve into why you should adopt a similar mindset, let’s look at why an urgent care exists. In …

Medical Care for Traveling Teams: An Alternative View of Travel Medicine

Urgent message: International travel and high-impact competitive sports combine to equal a strong need for consistent, high-quality medical care that’s immediately accessible. Could your urgent care center provide it? Travel medicine, sports medicine, and episodic injury care are all within the purview of urgent care practice.1 Urgent care physicians and other healthcare providers are often tasked with provision and/or consultation for healthcare management of traveling groups and nonprofessional teams, including sports organizations, charity groups, mission …

How Blogging Can Drive SEO for Your Urgent Care Facility

Urgent Message: Blogging is a relatively simple, inexpensive, and completely customized marketing tool too often underutilized by urgent care operators. Employed correctly, however, it can help search engines deliver potential patients to your website at any time of day or night. These days, it doesn’t matter if a patient is trying to find a nearby urgent care facility or research a medical condition to determine if they need medical attention. They won’t be looking in …

How to Cope with a Difficult Boss

Urgent message: When employees in an urgent care center encounter a physician or administrator who is challenging to work for, there are often steps they can take to avoid having to choose between their job and their sense of wellbeing. In today’s busy work environment, we interact with dozens of people every day, and sometimes challenging individuals go with the territory. Nevertheless, coping with a troublesome boss is overwhelming, and studies have shown that …

Stopping the Rise of Antibiotic Resistance: An Urgent Care Imperative

Urgent message: Antibiotic resistance is a worldwide problem with a local solution—one that starts in your urgent care center. Focusing on responsible prescribing, in combination with staff and patient education, will start to curb overprescribing. Every appropriate prescription you write and every inappropriate prescription you opt not to write is a step in the right direction. By 1980, scientists believed that roughly 3%-5% of Streptococcus pneumoniae were penicillin-resistant and by the turn of the century, …

Follow the Chain of Command

Urgent Message: An established chain of command clearly delineates roles and accountability among staff in an urgent care center. When this chain is broken by upper management “dipping down,” it creates confusion among staff, undermines supervisors’ authority, and brings inefficiency to operations. Case: Ian is the administrative director at a local urgent care center that’s part of a multi-unit operation. His responsibilities include scheduling the clinical support staff, approving time cards and writing performance reviews, …

Corporate Perks vs Corporate Culture in Urgent Care: They’re Not the Same

Urgent message: Many employers confuse perks with culture. Perks are non-wage benefits offered to employees, while culture refers to the beliefs, behaviors, and interactions of individual employees. While perks may be part of a culture, they are not a substitute or a basis for culture. The software development industry includes some of the most forward-thinking companies in the world. Not only are they creating technologies that are changing the way we work and play, they …

One Medical: Reimaging Primary Care Around the Consumer

Urgent message: Just as urgent care has changed consumer attitudes and behaviors related to on-demand healthcare, One Medical is reinventing the primary care practice by emphasizing high-tech engagement, on-demand convenience, quality provider face time, and price transparency. If the rise of urgent care were a television drama, then primary care might be one of the villains. Unable to get an appointment in a timely manner—in some markets waiting weeks or months—and having to miss work …