If you have an urgent care center near your home, you may have wondered; what can urgent care do? How is urgent care different than just going to your primary care physician or heading to the emergency room?
While there is some overlap, an urgent care fills a very specific need that went unfilled for along time until healthcare providers started seeing the benefits of filling that need. So what is the urgent need for urgent care? Urgent care is for non-emergency illnesses or injuries that occur when you are unable to get into your doctor.
For example, if your child has a sore throat and you think it might be strep, depending on the season, it might be a week or longer before your pediatrician can get you in because its that time of year when everyone?s kids are getting sick, so they are really backed up.
Urgent care is perfect for when you get a minor injury like a twisted ankle, minor burn, or small cut that might need a couple stitches. These are things you can?t wait to go to the doctor for, but they aren?t bad enough for the urgent care.
When thinking about what can urgent care do, don?t forget how useful it can be to simply have a doctor available in the evenings and on weekends when your children typically injury themselves or get sick. The non-typical hours also allow you to go to the doctor when you aren?t at work or your kids aren?t in school. For many parents, having to take off work to make a doctor?s appointment is a real hardship and could even be putting their job at risk.
You might be wondering when to go to urgent care. After all, you certainly aren’t a doctor, so how should you know when you have a legitimate emergency? Knowing when to use urgent care is a little bot of a guess sometimes, but you can figure it out. For example, you may go to urgent care thinking you have a sprained ankle, but it turns out to be broken. The urgent care can refer you to another facility if needed.
Emergency care is extremely expensive and often comes with long waits. A big part of the reason for the cost and wait is that so many people are going to the emergency room for non-emergency problems. The emergency room was not designed to deal with sore throats or infected splinters. Those are the types of things you can go to an urgent care for.
Not only will you save money going to an urgent care, but you are going to save time and aggravation. It’s stressful sitting in a waiting room for hours on end. Urgent care wait times are often nominal depending on their size and location.
What can urgent care do for you? They can provide you medical services when you need them, with little wait time, and no appointment needed. They are there when you need them, which you may not get with your doctor’s office.
