Emergency Room or Urgent Care?

August 27, 2008 By Debbie Dragon

Is there a difference in the price or quality of care between hospital emergency rooms and urgent care centers?  What instances require a hospital emergency room visit instead of an urgent care visit?

Hospital Emergency Rooms Overused

Numerous studies have shown that people are overusing hospital emergency rooms - or going to the ER for non-urgent matters.  A study by the CDC in 2005 indicated that only 5.5% of the 115.3 million people heading to the Emergency Room actually needed to be seen immediately.  About 21% of emergency room visitors were considered semi-urgent, requiring care within one or two hours and 14% were not considered urgent at all.

This could explain why you end up waiting several hours when you go to the emergency room!  If emergency room staff are tied up with patients that are not considered “urgent”, those that are may be forced to wait longer for care that is actually more urgent.

Urgent Care Centers

An alternative to the hospital emergency room is an urgent care center.  They are staffed by physicians and will almost always have shorter waiting times for treatment because they are less crowded.  You can visit an urgent care center without an appointment, and it will cost only a fraction of what hospital ER visit cost.

Urgent care centers are much like hospital emergency rooms in the types of situations they are qualified to handle.  They can treat you if you’ve broken bones, obtained a cut or infection, or if you need advanced life support equipment.  My son has severe asthma triggered by outdoor allergies - there have been several instances when I’ve had to rush him off the soccer field and into the urgent care center near his school.  The result has always been immediate treatment, caring physicians, and my insurance covers the visit just as they would a doctor’s visit or emergency room visit.  

Some urgent care centers offer discounts or payment plans, and most will accept your health insurance.

Posted in emergencies, health, miscellaneous

• Easy Way To Get An Online Auto Insurance Company Quote Now, you don't have to struggle and go to each auto insurance company to ask for a quote those days are gone, nowadays you can simple go online, search for a site that provide online...
• Taking DIY Disasters into Your Own Hands Watching home improvement television may inspire you to tackle your own home renovation projects, but just as quickly as you found the inspiration to get started, you will find yourself getting over your head. Every...
• How to Save Money on Fishing [caption id="attachment_180" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Gone Fishin'"][/caption]These days, finding ways to save money aren't hard. Everyone's trying to save money, whether it's using coupons, cutting back on expenses, or just making clear-cut sacrifices. What most people...
• Make Money Online: Quality of Service In addition to the size of your market and existing competition, the quality of service you provide is a very important factor in making money online.  High quality will provide credibility for your content or...
• Qualities of a Good Developer? It is often quoted that a good developer can be up to 10 times more productive than an average developer, so how can you tell whether a developer is good or not?...