Urgent Care Conference - 3 weeks away

The UCAOA Fall Urgent Care Conference is right around the corner - there are 5 different courses being offered - something for every member of your clinic staff:

• Starting a New Urgent Care Center
• Marketing Your Urgent Care Center
• Urgent Care Coding Basics
• Advanced Urgent Care Coding
• Essential Clinical Topics in Urgent Care

This post is primarily to encourage you to register now - Don't plan to "walk in" as we cannot guarantee we'll still have space for you! Click here to learn more and to register online today.

Urgent care in the news on the rise

Aside from our own recent appearances in the media, and our member centers getting kudos and features in all sorts of places, what I am noticing most now is that in many, many "general health" articles urgent care is getting mentioned as if it's the most natural thing in the world and has been around for years.

This post from a public policy blog even calls for more centers...

The UCAOA vision is to be the catalyst for the recognition of urgent care as an essential part of the health care system. But whether we have been the catalyst or not, the recognition is certainly coming, which is great for all of us.

Hope you are seeing it and feeling it too...

Triage counts - a cautionary tale

Here's a story in the San Diego newspaper that highlights the need for a triage process immediately upon presentation to the urgent care center - it's not a flattering story and works against what we are trying to accomplish - excellent service to patients and at the very least appropriate care. Make sure you have a process in place to do some sort of basic evaluation and triage of patients, "in order of arrival" is not always appropriate care.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/jenkins/20080811-9999-1m11jenkins.html

New CDC study on ER wait times

We've seen the "4 hours in the ER" statistic that turned out to be the total time, not the wait time. The CDC as now released new information that truly show wait time, and ties it to supply and demand, with visits going up and number of ERs going down. Wait times are up to an hour, while the unofficial urgent care standard for the entire visit is an hour (door to door average) - another reason to know where your community urgent cares are as well as you know where the nearest ER is - and for most things you can go to the urgent care first!

Average ER waiting time nears one hour, CDC says
AP/Yahoo News, August 6, 2008
The average time that hospital emergency rooms patients wait to see a doctor has grown from about 38 minutes to almost an hour over the past decade, according to statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase is due to supply and demand, said Stephen Pitts, MD, the lead author of the report. Overall, about 119 million visits were made to U.S. emergency rooms in 2006, up from 90 million in 1996. Meanwhile, the number of hospital emergency departments dropped to fewer than 4,600,

"Pain Clinics" masquerading as Urgent Care finally shut down

After many months of frustration for legitimate urgent care centers in Louisiana, three "pain clinics" using "urgent care" in their name were at last shut down and their leadership arrested.

Click here for the full story.

Neat collaboration between cardiologist group and urgent care

The headline reads "Doctors, urgent care join to keep patients out of emergency rooms" - this collaboration between a group of cardiologists and urgent care centers includes training and screening tools and some occasional sharing of space. It's a great example of the ways that community physician groups and urgent care centers can work together to strengthen the health care "safety net".
http://www.daytondailynews.com/b/content/oh/story/business/2008/07/17/ddn071708heartweb.html

Physician Entrepreneur of the Year Award

This seems tailor-made for many of our members! Modern Healthcare has created this new award and you certainly should consider applying. Here's the link for more information:

http://www.modernphysician.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=mppeoty

Good luck!