Urgent care medical centers can fill the gap between primary care appointments and emergency medical care services.
Defining Urgent Care
Urgent care centers have sprung up in the last decade in order to help ease the flow of patients into emergency rooms, especially when the conditions weren’t emergencies. These care centers are staffed with medical personnel who are trained in diagnosing acute conditions and then deciding on the best treatment direction. For some patients, this might mean they still need to go to the emergency room, but for others, a simple prescription or a bandage might be all that’s necessary. Urgent care centers are not for those injuries or illnesses that are considered to be true emergencies, but for those who need more care than their doctor can provide in an office visit, these centers are available – and often after hours.
What Urgent Care Can’t Do
Since urgent care centers are limited in the testing equipment they have on site, you might need to go to an emergency room if it’s determined your condition requires more than basic testing. An urgent care center is the perfect place to go when you have an infection you’ve had before, but you can not fight without a prescription – i.e. a bladder infection, yeast infection, etc. Or if you have a wound like a burn which is not severe, this center can help you manage the pain and promote healing with the use of prescription creams.
The main concern with urgent care centers is that they are often not staffed with many people, so the wait time can be long. In addition, they are not always covered by insurance plans, so they can be more expensive than ER visits, in some cases. But in terms of having a calmer place where people are often less sick and the room is less crowded, an urgent care center might be just what you need when you can’t seem to handle a particular medical problem on your own.