Some individuals know about, or have heard about urgent care centers and how they help patients. Urgent care centers like ours offer the same or similar medical services most patients receive at their primary care physician’s office and a hospital emergency room. At Prime Urgent Care, our goal is to allow as many people with illnesses and injuries access to top notch medical care at a more affordable rate than a typical doctor’s office and with better accommodations. In fact, this last point (better accommodations) is one of the major benefits our center provides patients: After hours care and less wait time. What patients will discover is that our urgent care center has professional staff that is ready to assist them with their illness and injury at times that are convenient for them and a lot quicker than they expected.
When to Choose Urgent Care
If a patient has a life threatening emergency that includes a heart attack, stroke, poisoning, bleeding that does not stop and others, they should seek an emergency center immediately. For other illnesses or injuries such as headaches or dizziness, stomach aches, sprains or strains, ear, nose, and throat infections, or minor cuts or burns, an after hours urgent care facility is a great option. This is especially true if the illness or injury is not severe enough to visit a hospital but the patient simply cannot wait for a doctor’s appointment, and/or the doctor’s office is closed at the time of the pain.
Benefits of Urgent Care
The fact remains that urgent care centers help save patients a lot of money in co-payments, especially when it comes to non-life-threatening emergencies that often send patients to hospitals. Typically, when a person feels ill or has a minor injury and it’s after hours for most doctor’s offices (closing hours range from 5-6pm), they immediately try to contact their primary physician for assistance. Unfortunately, many doctors are unavailable after hours or are difficult to reach. The next step is to head to the hospital, but between the high co-payments and the wait times, patients can become frustrated and their illness or injury aggravated.
With an after hours care center like ours, patients can rest assured that their bill will not be extremely high. In fact, urgent care centers help save approximately $4.4 billion a year in health costs for hospital visits that could have been handled by an urgent care center, according to a 2009 Rand Corp study.
Moreover, because we have extended hours including weekends, patients know they can visit our center when it is convenient for them. No appointments or scheduling is necessary as we accept walk-ins. The benefit to this type of service is that patients will immediately notice there are fewer people in the waiting area and doctors are focused on each and every patient. Plus, our after hours care center is conveniently located and easily accessible to patients in the area.
