Difference Between Urgent Care And Emergency Rooms

Urgent cares are medical facilities that provide and deliver medical care for things such as illness and injuries that require immediate attention but are usually not serious enough to require the patient to take a trip to the emergency room. Urgent is a word meaning to take immediate action, and was derived from the Latin word “urgentem”. The first urgent care facility was established in the 1970s when a few emergency medicine physicians came together and decided that the time had come to respond to a public need for easy and convenient access to medical care that was not scheduled by appointment, and did not ignore the normal and important qualifications of doctors, just like the hospitals. The urgent care industry was said to be equal to
Emergency rooms, however, are a little different in what services they provide since they are for more critical things. Emergency rooms provide services for things such as coughing up blood, severe chest pain, spinal injuries, broken bones, severe burns and seizures. The difference between urgent care clinics and the emergency room (ER) is the level of care that can be provided by each facility. If a patient has symptoms that are life threatening and need to be treated right away, he or she should make a trip to the emergency room where they can be given more efficient care. However, if a patient has something that needs to be treated but is not threatening his or her life, such as bronchitis or pneumonia symptoms and sprained bones, then an urgent care may be a better choice for the
In a recent study done by Fast Med Urgent Care, it was found that emergency rooms visits are actually about seven times more expensive than urgent care visits. The average cost for a visit to the emergency room is around $ 1,400. The average cost for an urgent care visit, however, is about $ 200. The study also states that emergency rooms have more things to pay on top of that high price as well. The copay is much higher for visits to the emergency room, the emergency room may charge multiple times instead of just once, and in the unlucky event that the patient’s insurance company deems his or her visit as medically unnecessary, the patient would be forced to pay the bill by themselves. Correspondingly, the myth that ambulance rides are free, unfortunately isn’t true. Ambulance rides to the emergency room are extremely expensive. The average ride in an ambulance to the emergency room is approximately $ 400- $ 1200, which further adds on to the bill the patient would have to pay if they did not go to the urgent care instead. Urgent cares also accept many insurances, therefore making sure that overall, the bill the patient has to pay will be very inexpensive. In its “Programs and Services” section (2017), Health Care Partners says that urgent care facilities typically accept most major HMO and PPO plans, as well as cash, checks, and even credit cards. Even though all urgent care centers