Category: Urgent care centenial co

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6 Reasons to Choose Urgent Care Over Emergency Room

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Thank goodness that emergency rooms exist for life threatening circumstances. However, for non-life threatening situation, emergency rooms can be unpleasant experiences. The waiting rooms are incredibly uncomfortable. The time it takes to be seen in an emergency room is notoriously long. You’re stuck in close quarters with all the other patients waiting to be seen, many of whom have contagious illnesses that you definitely don’t want to be exposed to. And the icing on the cake is the high medical bills and copays you’ll be subject to for your ER visit.
Thankfully, the growing availability of urgent care centers has given patients a great alternative to the emergency room when their medical issue is not life threatening but should be treated before their regular doctor’s office can see them. Here are six reasons to always choose urgent care over the emergency room, unless your circumstance is life threatening:

  1. You’ll get the care you need faster. If you have a serious injury, such as a broken ankle, you are probably in a lot of pain and want to be treated as quickly as possible. You can be treated in the emergency room, but your treatment will take a backseat to the patient experiencing symptoms of a heart attack, and the patient who is bleeding profusely. On the other hand, most urgent care facilities are equipped to handle x-ray and fracture care, and on average, the wait time at an urgent care clinic is less than 15 minutes.

  2. Your urgent care visit saves lives. This is not an exaggeration. If we all utilized urgent care clinics instead of emergency rooms for non-life threatening injuries, the medical staff who work in emergency rooms and the ER resources will be available to administer life-saving care to patients who have medical issues that jeopardize their lives.

  3. You’ll probably spend less at an urgent care than an ER. According to the National Institute of Health, the average emergency room bill is a whopping $1,233. Meanwhile, the average urgent care bill is $155. On top of that, many insurance companies won’t pay those high ER bills if your medical issue was not an emergency, so you could be stuck paying it out of pocket. Even if your health insurance does cover your ER visit, your copay is likely a lot steeper for an ER visit than a regular doctor’s visit. Many insurance companies treat urgent care visits as regular doctor’s appointments.

  4. You can probably get the treatment you need at an urgent care, even if your doctor does not provide it. Sometimes, you find yourself going to the emergency room because the care you need is not available at your doctor’s office. You need x-rays. You need immediate lab work. You need IV fluids. You need a breathing treatment for a non-serious breathing issue. While most of these services are not available at a regular physician’s office, most urgent care facilities do provide them.

  5. Urgent care can scale the care you receive to meet your needs. You have a urinary tract infection and need antibiotics immediately. This type of care doesn’t require a doctor, you are familiar with UTI symptoms and know when you have one. Urgent care facilities staff a range of medical professionals from nurses, nurse practitioners, to doctors. If your treatment can be provided by a nurse practitioner, you can be in an out without having to wait for the doctor to take a look at you and tell you what you already know.

  6. Your records are available at other network clinics. Say you visit your local Memorial Urgent Care for a specific reason. If you have to be seen again for the same issue, you can visit a different Memorial Urgent Care and see a different doctor, who will have access to all of your records. There might be five or six Memorial Urgent Cares in your area and all of the Memorial Urgent care facilities would be up to speed on your condition and your treatment plan, while you’d have to go back to the exact same emergency room to have complete records of your treatment if you went to ER.

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The Importance of STD Testing

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More STD Testing is Needed!

Although sex education is much more common now than a few years ago, STD testing is still not performed often enough. Less than 40% of sexually active young women are screened for chlamydia. This is even more shocking when you consider that in the United States over 20 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections occur. Most of these infections occur from just eight varieties of viruses and bacteria, all of which can be detected through relatively fast STD testing. We can raise the number of people tested for STDs through anonymous STD testing, so there is no stigma attached to their name. Many community health clinics practice confidential STD testing, and many government programs seek to lower the cost of testing.

STD Testing at Urgent Care Facilities


STD testing is often performed at urgent care facilities that are already overworked. At home STD testing is available in some instances, but the accuracy is not guaranteed. As more people now have health insurance the need for more urgent care facilities grows. Since 2008, the number of urgent care facilities in the country has increased from 8,000 to 9,300. The number of doctors practicing urgent care medicine today is also growing, there are currently 20,000 physicians practicing Urgent Care Medicine, and if this trend continues we will need 52,000 by the year 2025. Since STD testing is a service performed at these clinics, and most urgent care centers need to keep patients moving quickly, fast STD testing is a necessity.

Spread STD Knowledge

Although there are many areas in our healthcare system that need improvement, improved and more available STD testing is one of the most important. Lack of STD knowledge can lead to increased rates of infertility, cervical cancer, even nerve disease in some cases. Our young people need to be aware of the dangers of unprotected sex and the lack of regular STD testing if they are sexually active.

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President Obama Visits Washington Hospital For Sore Throat

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Even the most powerful man in the world isn’t immune to the annoyance of having a sore throat.

President Obama recently visited Walter Reed Medical Center for diagnostic tests after complaining of a persistent sore throat for weeks. Under the recommendation of the president’s primary care physician, Dr. Jackson, the president underwent a series of test which determined acid reflux to be the cause of his sore throat.

It seems fitting that the President is taking advantage of the healthcare system he drastically reformed with the passing of the Affordable Care Act. Prior to its passing, understaffed and overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, in addition to primary care physician offices struggled with treating patients, often times a high cost to those seeking care. Urgent care facilities, however, helped manage the influx of newly insured patients in need of medical attention following the passing of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, urgent care clinics have long played an important role in American healthcare industry.

Urgent care centers are designed to treat medical conditions that are not severe enough to warrant a trip to a hospital emergency room, yet still require medical attention. However, advanced urgent care centers continue to take on more responsibility in order to ease the burden of emergency rooms and physician offices. Many advanced urgent care centers offer services such as x rays and other forms of diagnostic testing, in addition to in house dispensaries, which allow patients to leave with their prescription medication.

While the role of advanced urgent care centers in the future of American healthcare remains unclear, Americans, including the President, now have more treatment options available than ever before. Links like this.