Urgent care clinics are becoming the first stop for people who need treatment for minor medical issues. Emergency rooms are posing problems such long wait rooms and rising expenses.
The urgent care clinics are private facilities that are designed to give comprehensive, convenient and affordable medical treatment without an appointment.
Let’s have a look at the advantages of visiting the urgent care clinics.
- Reduced Wait Time
Compared to the emergency rooms that have extremely long wait times, the urgent care centers are convenient and offer prompt service. The emergency rooms attend to life-threatening emergencies and therefore treat patients according to the severity of a condition.
An urgent care clinic attends to people according to arrival time meaning that your waiting time is extremely short. Studies have indicated that up to 69 percent of urgent care clinics have average wait times of less than 20 minutes.
- Lower Costs
Emergency rooms are extremely expensive with the average cost of a visit running up to $1,000 owing to the high carry-over costs of hospitals.
The average cost of a visit to an urgent care clinic is $150. The lower cost is attributed to reduced copays compared to emergency rooms. You will have more money to retain in the pocket.
- Greater Attention to Patients
Due to the high patient volume in the emergency room, the doctors have only a few minutes with each patient. The urgent care clinics have a lower patient volume, and hence the physicians spend more time with a patient ensuring that they provide quality care and services.
- Greater efficiency
The emergency rooms are designed to treat life-threatening emergencies such as seizures, breathing problems, head injuries, car accidents, heart attacks, and severe wounds. However, some people who do not have insurance or a primary care physician will often visit the emergency room for minor treatments.
The urgent care clinics are designed to handle the minor medical issues such as colds and flu, sprains, minor cuts, infections, and rashes. They will handle these minor issues more efficiently than the emergency room.
- Convenience
The urgent care clinics are increasingly growing in popularity making it convenient for patients seeking medical services. There are a handful of urgent care centers in about every neighborhood compared to 1 or 2 emergency rooms in cities.
- Minimal Exposure To Disease Organisms
The amount of time spent in an emergency room increases the risk of exposure and getting some airborne diseases. Unnecessary exposure to disease pathogens is avoided at the urgent care clinics due to the shorter wait times.
- Fewer Bills
The visit to the emergency room is linked to numerous bills from the different providers such as the physician, the radiologist and the lab. The urgent care clinics usually send a single bill for all services that are providing which will mean lower costs and no headache trying to decipher the bill.
- Lesser Testing
There are inexpensive ways of ruling out the presence of specific conditions. The urgent care clinics will offer comprehensive care that stresses attention on the patients rather than on tests. This is unlike the emergency rooms that rely on a battery of tests to ensure that they attend to the high patient volume.
- Quicker Prescription Refills
After getting a prescription to the emergency room, you will have to join another long queue at the pharmacy to fill it. An alternative is to find another pharmacy after getting the prescription.
The emergency care clinics will have prescription medications at hand so that you save time and get you home feeling better.
- Friendlier Service
Sentinelle Santé stands out among other urgent care clinics since it is designed to provide excellent medical care and one-on-one attention in a calm and friendly environment in Ottawa and Gatineau.
