ER vs. Urgent Care
Did you know that over 80% of emergency room visits could be treated at an urgent care like bluedoor?
Often, when faced with unexpected or urgent medical situations, the first instinct is to head straight to the nearest emergency room. Of course, when illness or injury is life threatening, the ER is the place to go. However, for times when our medical conditions are not life-threatening emergencies, there is another option available to us.
Emergency rooms are not the fastest or most cost efficient choice when you need immediate care. And conditions can be too urgent to wait days or weeks for an appointment with a primary care physician. Urgent cares like Bluedoor are specialized in quickly diagnosing and treating these acute medical conditions.
Similar to emergency rooms, urgent care clinics are designed to treat a wide range of symptoms. With injuries such as fractures or cuts, urgent care clinics are typically able to assess for broken bones using onsite x-rays and can perform stitches when needed.
What Urgent Cares like Bluedoor Treat
Some examples of the common illnesses that are treated at urgent cares are:
Cold & flu
Allergic reactions
Cuts & scrapes
Sinus infections
Pink eye
UTI’s
Broken bones
Minor burns
Minor lacerations
Drug testing
STD testing
COVID 19 testing
On-site diagnostic testing
Physicals: Annual Physicals, Immigration Physicals, Sports Physicals
Knowing when to go to the emergency room vs. when to go to an urgent care facility can save you time and money.
So What is the Difference Between “Emergency” and “Urgent”?
When determining whether to go to the emergency room or an urgent care clinic it’s important to understand the difference between an “emergency” and an “urgent” medical situation.
Emergency medical situations are a life or limb threatening injury or illness. Some of the most common emergency medical situations include:
Severe chest pain
Convulsions or seizures
Deep cuts or gunshot wounds
Head injuries
Excessive or uncontrollable bleeding
Poisoning
Loss of consciousness
Compound fractures
Immediate threat to loss of a limb (i.e. car accident or infection)
Urgent medical situations are when someone’s life or limbs are not at risk for permanent damage but prompt medical attention is still needed. The most common “urgent” medical situations include:
Sprains or strains
Broken bones/fractures
Skin rashes
Cold or Flu
Fever
Dehydration
Vomiting
Allergic reactions
UTI (urinary tract infections)
Migraines
Diarrhea
Nausea
Strep throat
STD’s
What’s the Difference Between an ER and an Urgent Care Facility?
Emergency rooms are prepared to treat any and all medical conditions coming through their doors at all hours of the day. They are staffed and equipped with medical devices that can be used at a moments notice and are designed to handle the most complicated and time sensitive life threatening medical situations.
Emergency rooms operate by treating the most critical patients first. As a result, patients coming in with mild or moderate medical conditions often experience longer wait times while critical cases are treated first. Urgent care clinics were established to help relieve emergency rooms by specializing in these less extreme but still timely conditions. Not only do urgent care clinics reduce the impact on overcrowded hospitals but they can also offer shorter waiting times and reduced costs for patients.
One reason a trip to the emergency room is so expensive is that an ER is designed to account for the equipment and staff available to treat virtually any illness or injury 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This may explain why a trip to the emergency room can cost upwards of $1,350.
Urgent care clinics operate on a smaller, more localized capacity, thus lowering costs for individuals and insurers. One trip to an urgent care clinic costs on average $150 which is about 1/10th the cost of one trip to the emergency room. Not only that, the average wait time before being seen by a provider in the emergency room can run upwards of 90 minutes, whereas the typical wait time at an urgent care clinic is less than 30 minutes.
Also, urgent care costs are often fully covered by insurance providers. In fact, an increasing number of insurance companies are offering incentives and raising reimbursement rates for patients to visit urgent care clinics rather than the emergency room. Bluedoor, for example, accepts most PPO insurance as well as medicare and medical.
How Does Bluedoor Serve the Community as an Urgent Care?
At Bluedoor, our experienced providers have over 20+ years combined experience diagnosing and treating any number of ailments that have come through our doors. As a proud member of our community for nearly 45 years, bluedoor offers all the benefits of a traditional urgent care - convenience, efficiency, affordability, insurance coverage, quality providers - but strives to take that even further. In addition to providing traditional urgent care services, we continue to evolve our suite of the most well understood and most researched holistic and integrative treatments.
See our full list of urgent care services here.
Check out our integrative and holistic services here.
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