How Do Urgent Care Clinics Improve the Health Care Industry?
The emergency room in hospitals exist to treat life-threatening illnesses and injuries, as you may already know. However, sometimes a person needs a doctor’s attention on the weekend or late at night, so they’re forced to go to the emergency room in hospitals nearby. This leads to a high volume of patients, which results in longer wait times, lower quality health care services, and more expensive treatment.
Medical urgent care facilities are sprouting up all across the United States to solve such problems. These facilities are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to provide services for those who can’t make it to the doctor during normal hours. These urgent care clinics can help ease the pressure placed everyday on the emergency room in hospitals.
The differences between an urgent care facility and the emergency room in hospitals are quite astounding. First of all, the average urgent care visit only lasts for about 60 minutes, while a trip to the ER can take hours. Secondly, the cost differences are staggering. For example, an emergency room will treat allergies, bronchitis, and an ear ache for respectively $345, $595, and $400. At an urgent care clinic, these will only respectively cost $97, $127, and $110.
These urgent care clinics are not a replacement for the emergency room in hospitals, though. Urgent care cannot, and should not, treat life-threatening injuries and maladies. Generally speaking, an emergency condition is one that could permanent impair or endanger an individual’s life. For example, you should go to an emergency room in hospitals if you suffer from severe chest pain, compound fractures, seizures, heavy bleeding, deep knife wounds, gunshots, poisoning, moderate to severe burns, serious head/neck/back injuries, severe abdominal pain, or other such egregious wounds.
Although urgent care clinics are vastly improving the health care system in the United States, you should still go to an emergency room in hospitals if you truly need to. For all other times, it’s best to visit an urgent care clinic. Good refereneces.
