Emergency Medical Care Without the Cost

Being struck by sudden illness or medical worry is already taxing enough on the physical, mental, and emotional self, but it shouldn\’t be a burden on your wallet. While this is a statement that is difficult to disagree with — that people should receive medical care at a lower cost, the sad fact is that the modern-day hospital system and does not agree with this. For anyone that has ever visited an emergency room with urgent medical needs, they know perfectly well just how much pain is caused even after the medical needs have been put to rest: The bills are often exorbitant and confusing, even if you have medical insurance.

The issue is that the major healthcare system in the United States has been able to corner a specific market, where hospitals are owned and watched by larger corporations that regulate all facilities and, quite unfortunately, steadily increase the prices of medical care each and every year. Similarly, anyone who has visited an emergency room with a medical worry — one they might deem to be \”unimportant\” to other cases — might often have you sitting in a waiting room for multiple hours before seeing a physician.

If you are dealing with any form urgent medical needs — chest pain, breathing difficulties, flu treatment, severe stomach pain, or long-standing sore throats — you should know that emergency rooms are not the only options available. Rather, you should highly consider visiting an urgent care facility — sometimes referred to as convenient care, a 24 hour walk in clinic, and more.

The methods and management of urgent care facilities far outweigh the characteristics of emergency rooms in a variety of ways. For one, urgent care markets aren\’t overly centralized, meaning that locations are often singular, not being connected directly to a hospital or being overseen by a larger shell organization that is managing 10+ other convenient care locations. In 2015 it was reported that urgent care locations saw
an average of nearly 12, 000 patients, making for 32 visits per day. Similarly, wait times often lasted 30 minutes or less. Compared to the wait times at an emergency room, it means that you\’ll be seeing a physician in due time without the worry of a long wait. Convenient care locations often treated a number of urgent medical needs, of which ranged from acute upper respiratory infection, acute sinusitis, cough, and acute bronchitis.

It should be said, though, that urgent care centers sometimes cannot cover and treat all urgent medical needs, but more often than not they can cover the issues that people are dealing with. It is often said that 70% of emergency room visits involve cases that stemmed from non-emergency illnesses or conditions, meaning that patients could have instead visited a urgent care location. On the flip side, only 3% of patients who visited a convenient center needed to have their urgent medical needs diverted to an emergency department. These often result from seriously fractured bones, major illness, and other more serious urgent medical needs. However, most all other medical needs can be covered by urgent care, saving you both time and money that would be lost by visiting an emergency room.