Visiting a hospital or doctor can be costly when you are uninsured. For this reason, many people who do not have health insurance opt not to receive medical care. Unfortunately, this behavior opens the door for health concerns to compound. The cost of visiting an emergency room is absorbent, and many people simply cannot afford it. In the United States, many uninsured people with low incomes do not qualify for Medicaid or other health care programs. How can these people receive care? One facility steadily gaining popularity is the neighborhood urgent care. No Insurance is no longer a reasons for people to skip out on medical care.
Urgent care No Insurance facilities are quickly filling the gap in medical care. For people who are uninsured, visiting an urgent care facility is a viable option for medical treatment. This is especially true for those who do not qualify for government healthcare options, like Medicaid.
Services Cost Less than the Emergency Room
Urgent care services are much less expensive than the emergency room. Emergency rooms must be staffed with equipment to handle all types of conditions and treatments. Urgent care facilities do not. A typical urgent care facility can handle broken bones, minor infections, urinary tract infections and most non-life threatening ailments. Because they carry less equipment, urgent care visits are one-third to one-half the cost of visits to the emergency room.
Emergency rooms must be staffed with board-certified doctors and specialists. If a fire victim, trauma victim and heart attack victim are all brought to the hospital, the emergency room staff must be able to work on all of them simultaneously. Urgent care facilities are typically staffed with a variety of doctors, nurses and medical assistants.
Also, urgent care facilities often offer discounts for people who do not have health insurance. Emergency room facilities often do not offer these discounts. Discounts may not be given automatically. People without insurance must often ask for these discounts at the time of service. If you are uninsured and are shy to ask for a discount, do not be. These discounts make sense.
Cost Analysis of Services
Unlike a traditional doctor’s office or emergency room facility, the employees of urgent care facilities tend to know exactly what their services cost. A traditional doctor’s office tends to rely on running health records through insurance companies to determine patient cost. Emergency room facilities often offer too many services to keep track of the cost of each one.
In an urgent care facility, patients will be billed at the end of their visit. Administrative staff must know exactly what charges to bill. Patients can ask to be notified of each charge as it occurs. If a patient needs a blood culture, he or she can ask the staff what the cost is before proceeding with the treatment. Cost analysis is important to people without health insurance. This way, patience can know the cost of a service before agreeing to it.
Urgent care facilities are capable of resolving minor medical issues and running lab tests, urgent care facilities often provide uninsured patients with one-stop shopping for their medical needs.
In general, urgent care facilities are the best choice for the medical care of the uninsured.
