Urgent care is a category of walk-in care in a dedicated medical facility outside of a traditional emergency room. Urgent care centers primarily treat injuries or illnesses that can’t wait for your regular physician, but aren’t serious enough for the ER. Urgent care centers can treat routine injuries and illnesses such as the flu, perform physical exams, take X-rays, set broken bones, and more. Urgent care center wait times are often much shorter than an ER, and traditionally cost much less.
Did you know that many injuries and illnesses you might go to the ER for can be treated at an urgent care center? In fact, research shows that about 50% of everything seen in an ER could be seen at an urgent care instead. Here are a few examples:
Fever, cold, or flu
Setting and casting broken bones
Sprains and strains
X-rays and lab tests
Suturing minor cuts
If your injury or illness is life-threatening, you should go to the ER instead of to your local urgent care center. Here are just a few examples of when to go to the ER:
You have chest pains or an irregular heart beat
You received an electrical shock
You have a severe allergic reaction
You fell from a height greater than 7 feet
You were severely burned