Healthcare is important. If you break your leg at midnight, you want to know there is someplace you can go. Emergency departments are open everyday, all day and are always taking patients. However, emergency departments are not always located right where you need them to be and they are often more expensive than other options. More care options are urgent care centers, but they might not treat everything that can be treated at an emergency room and may not be open 24 hours per day. The best option is to combine the urgent care and the emergency department into one convenient care option. Here are three ways convenient care makes sense.
1. Americans go to the emergency centers regularly. Visits to emergency departments have increased by over 20% in the past decade. That means you may be waiting longer because there are more patients. It means that you may have a harder time being seen. Your condition may not be serious enough to put you ahead of the other waiting people. The number of emergency care visits will likely increase and the demand for resources and time will also increase. Convenient care centers can help decrease the number of people that visit the emergency department by sending some patients directly to urgent care.
2. Emergency room visits are expensive. In 2009, a study found that up to 27% of emergency departments cases could have been handled by urgent care centers and saved $4.4 billion per year. By visiting an urgent care center instead of the emergency room, you can save money on testing, staff, and the resources used. By using a convenient care center that is both an ER and urgent care, you can have the ready convenience of the ER with the lower cost and quick service of the urgent care.
3. Doctors may be hard to find. Projections estimate that America will need 90,000 more physicians by 2020. This will affect all areas, including family doctors and emergency room doctors. By combining urgent care and emergency room departments, doctors can be shared between the two departments. This can help relieve some of the stress on the doctors and on the patients. It will also ease the number of doctors needed.
Convenient care centers combine the urgent care facilities and the emergency department. This can save time, money, and frustration for all involved. Convenient care centers can treat minor illnesses, lacerations, fever, and provide pediatric care. Skip the long waits and expensive bills from the emergency room while keeping the convenient hours. Convenient care centers may be the best medical advantage you can get.