Urgent care vs. emergency room: How to know where to go

What is urgent care?

Urgent care is the place where you can go for common medical problems. They are especially helpful during times when doctors’ offices are closed or at full capacity to accept more patients. Urgent cares typically see patients with problems such as fever, stomach pain, bumps and minor injuries, vomiting, diarrhea and other basic ailments.

Do you know what an emergency room is?

Unlike an urgent care, the emergency room is for patients who need more specialized medical care. ERs are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. An emergency room has the necessary equipment to deal with strokes, vehicular accidents, heart attacks and any life-threatening emergency.

Service hours

One aspect of urgent care vs. emergency room to consider is the hours in which patients be seen. For example, some urgent care clinics are open on weekends from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., when most private practices are closed, although these hours vary from place to place. It is important to identify your symptoms to know if it is possible to wait for the primary doctor’s office to open or if it is necessary to go to an emergency room, which is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Urgent care vs. emergency room: Medical specialties

You can go to an urgent care for treatment of: muscle aches, injuries, minor burns, bumps, sprains, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, earaches, respiratory infections and urinary tract infections, to name just a few. Emergency rooms, for their part, treat patients whose condition has worsened or who require immediate medical attention caused by: serious accidents, respiratory difficulties, excessive bleeding, epileptic seizures, blows to the head, extreme abdominal pain and fractures, among others.

Cost

The costs of urgent care vs. emergency rooms vary according to the severity of the condition. For example, an urgent care visit costs an average of $100 to $150. A visit to the emergency room is, by nature, more expensive, since it requires specialized attention. You will have to cover the costs of stay, special equipment, medications and additional services, which can raise the price of a stay up to $10,000.

Wait time

Another difference between an emergency room and urgent care is the wait time. In an urgent care, you may have to wait for quite a while since most people aren’t there for acute emergencies. In the case of emergency rooms, patients will be triaged according to their severity. Depending on you symptoms, you will be treated immediately or in an average period of 3 or 4 hours, in cases where the symptoms are moderate.

The post urgent care vs. Emergency room: Know how to know where to go appeared first on Mundo Hispanico.