Monday, March 24, 2014

Is ‘convenience’ the right word to describe urgent care clinics?

Unfortunately, at times when we fall sick we do not get convenience of finding an immediate medical care. A prominent reason behind this is busy working hours of doctors or other staff members in hospitals, which concentrate more on life threatening patients.

This calls for an alternate like family practitioner. However, question arises that what should be done when they are not in the town?

Wait in long queues of ER or rush to some other hospital, where again patient might face the same situation like previous one.

Sometimes things are so worsened that patient or family member might end up paying more than the actual price of treatment. Hence, visiting ER ends up being a costly affair, especially, if one does not have insurance.

Luckily, there is another better option than visiting ER. However, they do not treat life-threatening medical emergencies, but still it is the best alternative for non-life threatening patients who require immediate medical care.

Be it allergic reaction, severe sinus infection, cold, joint pain, wart treatment, abscess drainage, deer tick bite, asthma or any other non-life threatening medical problem, urgent care clinic is one stop best option. In regard to this, necessary medications would be provided by the specialized doctors of clinics.

Besides treating medical problems, these clinics are also best for conducting x-rays, pre-operative evaluations/clearance, STD screening, diabetes screening, high blood pressure screening, annual exams or any other lab tests for that matter.

Considering all the above points regarding walk in clinics, it’s quite clear that these are bliss for patients who suffer from non-life threatening conditions. No doubt, the quality of service delivered in the both medical care centers is the same, but difference lies in the factor of convenience. Immediate medical care attention is provided in urgent clinics as compared to ER. Moreover, difference also lies in the factors of cost and time consumption (because ER costs high for basic checkups and consumes more time, as they treat patients on the basis of triage).

Moreover, you need not specifically visit walk in clinics at time of need, you can also visit these centers for basic regular checkups, as well.

Therefore, before you rush to ER, carefully review the symptoms of illness and based on that go for the health care center (if suffering from fever visit urgent clinics and if suffering from life threatening conditions like cancer then go for ER).

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