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More Choices For Area Health Care Consumers
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More Choices For Area Health Care Consumers

Ask enough people about the difference between urgent care centers, emergency rooms and primary care offices, and many different perceptions and opinions emerge.

It can be difficult for patients to know the appropriate level of care to seek for their symptoms.

Urgent care facilities are there to treat coughs, colds and flu; provide physicals for schools, camps and workplaces.

They administer vaccines, conduct drug screenings, screen and treat urinary tract infections, and x-ray and set fractures and sprains. The “urgent” in urgent care refers to the speed with which patients see doctors.

Primary care physicians can perform many of the above duties in addition to developing and coordinating care plans for patients with chronic health issues that require extensive follow-up care.

Emergency room emergencies include heart attack, stroke, severe burns, head trauma, loss of consciousness, punctures or lacerations requiring surgery, and women going into labor. However, emergency room doctors report seeing patients coming in for colds.

Patients are concerned that if they make the wrong decision about where to go, they will be wasting valu-

able time.

According to ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, the national average time patients spent in the emergency room before being sent home is 134 minutes and the average for Virginia is 167 minutes.

When contrasted to the statistic that sixty-nine percent of urgent care centers have wait times of less than 20 minutes (according the Urgent Care Association of America 2012 benchmarking survey), where patients are seen on a walk-in basis with no appointments necessary.

Getting appointments with primary care offices can take weeks and office hours are often limited. Primary care offices typically aren't open on weekends or most evenings, when patients have time to see them.

However, many primary care medical groups are starting to adapt to the market place by offering expanded hours and sometimes even partnering with retail-based urgent care centers.

You can see that the stakes are high, in terms of time-efficiency, when making a decision where to rec-

eive care.

Another major consideration is cost. A 2009 Annals of Internal Medicine study found the overall cost of care for an urgent care center visit was $156, compared with $166 at physician's offices and $570 at ER settings.

Urgent cares and primary care offices are aligned regarding accepting most major insurance plans with low co-pays. Many urgent cares have self-pay discount options for services if the patient is not using insurance.

When you are the one who needs care, every medical situation seems like an emergency, but no one wants to wait to receive care.

This is why it is important for health care providers to educate their patients on where to go to seek the right level of care and patients should have tools to evaluate, based on their symptoms, what level of care is required. They can then consider convenience, cost and timeliness in making there decision where to receive care.

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