It's a familiar scenario -- you were doing yard work on Saturday morning, and you hurt your arm. It should probably be splinted, but your doctor's office is closed. You could go to the emergency room, but that's time-consuming and expensive. Do you wait for Monday and hope it doesn't get worse, or do you spend too much money and most of your day at the emergency room? If there's an urgent care center nearby, you don't have to make that choice.
Identification
An urgent care center provides a step between your primary-care physician and a hospital emergency room. It's open at hours when traditional doctor's offices are closed and is available for walk-in care. It's ideal for treating minor emergencies or for times when you can't wait for an appointment with your regular doctor.
Standards
The Urgent Care Association of America has created a list of criteria an urgent care center must adhere to in order to be certified. There are two categories available. A Category 1 center must have a licensed physician on site during all open hours. A Category 2 center must have a licensed nurse practitioner or physician on site during operating hours. In either case, a licensed physician must be the medical director for the center and be responsible for overall quality.
To be certified, an urgent care center must accept patients of any age for walk-up appointments during operating hours, unless it is advertised as for pediatric care only. There must be at least two exam rooms, a waiting room and patient restrooms. It must be open seven days a week, at a minimum of four hours a day and 3,000 hours a year. This may be waived if the center is connected to another facility within five miles that does meet the operating-hours criteria.
An urgent care center must have on site: X-ray and phlebotomy services, an automated external defibrillator, an appropriately stocked drug cart, oxygen and a working phone to dial 911. There must be practitioners on site who are licensed to use this equipment, as well as able to deliver IV medication and perform minor procedures, such as cyst removal and splinting.
Benefits
Without urgent care centers, a person who gets sick or hurt outside of regular office hours is subject to a lot of waiting. You can wait for your doctor to open and hope you can get an appointment. Or you can go to a hospital emergency room and wait to be seen there, where wait times can be three hours or more. At an urgent care center, you can walk in at odd hours and be seen without an appointment, generally within half an hour of your arrival.
Most urgent care centers accept insurance, and they tend to be significantly cheaper than hospital emergency rooms. You will probably get more individual care, as well, since you aren't competing with life-threatening emergencies for your doctor's time.
Potential
By removing those with non-life-threatening issues from the hospital emergency room, wait times can be improved for patients who do need emergency treatment. Doctors will be able to focus more on fewer patients and theoretically improve the quality of care they receive.
Warning
Symptoms such as pain or tightness in the chest, difficulty breathing, excessive vomiting or diarrhea, sudden dizziness or uncontrollable bleeding are not appropriate for an urgent care center. These may be life-threatening situations, and they should be taken to a hospital emergency room.
Tags: care center, emergency room, urgent care, center must, hospital emergency, hospital emergency room
