Urgent Care In Emergency Room

When an illness or injury appear out of nowhere, you would usually go to an emergency room, but no one is being helped fast enough at an emergency room, so instead, people have turned to one of the fastest-growing segments of American health care: urgent care, a walk-in clinic. Although urgent care is not exactly like an emergency room, it is a clinic that handles many medical problems that are not too severe but need to be treated right away, especially if your primary care physician is not available. It is important that you realize that urgent care clinics are not a substitute for your primary care physician, but they are a great resource when you need care but can not get in with your doctor. Visiting an urgent care center is a great alternative …show more content…
“The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said there were more than 136 million visits to emergency rooms in 2012. While the American College of Emergency Physicians reports that 92% of emergency visits are from “very sick people who need care within 1 minute to 2 hours,” the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey estimates that one-third to one-half of all ER visits are for non-urgent care. The New England Health Institute said 56% of emergency room visits were “totally avoidable.” It didn’t say how much of the remaining 44% could have been treated at urgent care centers, but several studies suggest many of these cases could have been handled in urgent care. In fact, the top three reasons for ER visits in 2012 were sprains and strains (6.1 million visits), upper respiratory infections (5.9 million) and superficial cuts (5.8 million). Thus, the decision to receive treatment at an emergency room is one of the many reasons Americans spent $3 trillion on healthcare in 2014. It’s also a factor for why more than 75 million people complained they were having problems paying off medical debt, which happens to be the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. Some of the debt problems could be avoided if people knew more about emergency rooms, urgent care centers and walk-in …show more content…
The vast majority of people seeking emergency care need to be there, and as the population ages, the need for emergency care will increase. Despite the proliferation of urgent care centers, the number of people seeking emergency care grows every year” (ACEP, 2014). When dealing with climate change, many diseases are linked to climate fluctuations, especially cardiovascular mortality and respiratory illnesses due to heat waves. Rising temperatures will also increase the transmission of infectious diseases, which will need to be treated (Patz, Epstein, Burke, Balbus, 2016). “Despite prevention and wellness efforts and the efforts to create patient medical homes, people will always face unexpected injuries and illnesses, which need to be treated in an ER” (ACEP,