Urgent Care - The Basics Of Choosing A Clinic

There are a million reasons to skip the emergency room if you don't have a life threatening

injury or a medical condition that could require hospitalization. Go into the ER with a cold and you're going to sit in the waiting room for a very long time. Giving patients an alternative option, urgent care clinics are privately run and can treat those minor injuries and illnesses that fall to the back of the line in the ER. These places are run on a first come-first served basis, meaning you won't have to wait behind gunshot wounds and heart attacks to get some cold medicine. Here are the basics of choosing a good clinic.

General Medicine

When you look for an urgent care clinic, you want one that can handle just about anything you bring through the door, save something that is more appropriate for the ER. But you certainly don't want to have to go to one clinic for a broken hand, another one for the sniffles, and a third one for a persistent headache. You need an all-in-one solution that can handle all of your problems with the same level of excellent healthcare. To go a step further, if you can find a clinic that houses a laboratory and their own x-ray machines, so much the better. That will keep you from having to run across town and deal with bills and paperwork from two different offices for a single health problem.

Location

If you have a healthcare problem that needs immediate attention, you don't want to drive thirty minutes away to get it. Look for an urgent care clinic conveniently located near you so you don't simply choose the hospital because it is closer. The importance of this is established further if you need to go back in for a follow-up appointment, which would mean another commute if you chose a place far away from your home. If you are given a prescription that you have to fill at the pharmacy, this adds even more time onto your trip when you probably just want to go home and rest.

Hours

An urgent care clinic isn't of much use to you if it opens when you go to work, closes when you go home for the day, and shuts the doors on the weekend. Yet some clinics do just that, forcing people to the ER at the worst times to go. Going to the ER during normal business hours isn't even that much of a hassle and the wait usually isn't that bad. It's the evenings and weekends that you want to avoid if at all possible. If the clinic you choose is closed during those times, you really aren't any further ahead.

by: Anna Woodward

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