Now that we have covered the history of the organization and why we are looking to recruit, let’s now transition to the nuts and bolts of the practice opportunity.
At MedStar Health Urgent Care, providers care for 3-4 patients per hour, and we accommodate all ages and complaints every day from 8:00am-8:00pm. All our facilities are modern in appearance with the MedStar color scheme of yellow and blue, with light colored floors. The use of lots of natural light and indirect lighting provides a nice experience for patients and staff. All facilities have between 4-8 exam rooms, a lab that performs point of care testing, x-ray and a BLS equipped crash cart. When any lab results sent out come back, our off-site call center team calls patients back to inform them of the test results. This frees up our onsite staff to focus on patient care.
We have a cutting-edge telehealth service in all our clinics. This allows us to see patients from their home, or to help ease wait times when a lot of patients show up at the same time. Patients have the option to check in from home or when they arrive on one of our iPads. Patients can go out to the comfort of their car and wait to receive a call or text when we are ready to see them, or just remain in the waiting room. After they are checked in, they will complete a one-page history form and a one-page consent form. There are 2-3 MA’s that work per shift that take care of our patient’s vitals and the initial consultation. This allows the provider to come in and diagnose/treat whatever condition a patient may present. We have basic medications like those provided in a fast track of an ER. Currently, two of the clinics provide a virtual scribe that writes the provider’s notes in real time to make the process more efficient. Having a scribe is an option for our new providers.
We have a mobile computer/monitor in each facility that allows us to offer virtual consultations from our physicians in Emergency Medicine, Orthopedics, and Cardiology. Our staff uses this service approximately 30-40 times a day and the average wait time for the consultant to answer is 2-3 minutes. Since the consultants are MedStar providers, the consultants can enter their notes into the EMR for accurate documentation. This system is an important part of our quality and safety culture and helps generate more referrals for our subspecialists. The mobile computer/monitor also provides access to our virtual scribes, and translators. It’s as simple as signing on, and the physician, scribe or translator will answer and be able to conduct a video consultation with you and your patient. All our x-rays are read by our MedStar Radiologists with an average turnaround time of 15 minutes. Approximately 5% of our Urgent Care patients will be transferred to the ER either via ambulance or in the patient's private vehicle.
MedStar Health Urgent Care has a centralized call center that fields all incoming calls and routes them to the sites as needed. To allow our providers at the clinics to focus on patient care, any patient follow up questions or concerns are forwarded to the administrator on call. Every day there is an administrator on call who is one of the clinical leadership members. Each full or part time physician assistant or nurse practitioner is assigned a mentoring physician for further support.
For our potential new hires that will be joining our team, you can expect to work 144 hours to qualify as FTE per month. You have the option to request a schedule that puts most or all your shifts into the first half or second half of the month. We prioritize our full and part-time providers to 12- hour shifts. Each new hire is assigned to a region, and you should expect to cover 2-3 facilities within your region over the course of the month. This allows MedStar a lot of scheduling flexibility and when a provider wants time off, it’s much easier to work that into the schedule. MedStar will pay $25-50 on top of your hourly pay for any additional shifts that you pick up.
Our schedules come out about 30 days in advance. For example, the schedule for June will be out by the end of April. If you want to change any of your shifts after the schedule comes out, there is a process to be able to drop or swap your shifts with your colleagues.
The initial interview will take place virtually. The time from interview to offer is typically a week, unless it is established that a second interview will be necessary. On-site profiles are available by request.