Don’t overpay for the ER

When you’re injured or ill and need immediate treatment, it can be hard to decide whether you should go to the nearest hospital emergency room (ER) or a local urgent care center. But if you keep a few guidelines in mind, you’ll be able to choose the most appropriate care for your situation. Does the choice really matter? Absolutely. Making the right decision can save you time, money and discomfort—or in true emergencies, even life and limb.

A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta shows that many Americans visit the ER when an urgent care facility would be more appropriate for their needs. Take the 110.2 million ER visits in the United State during 2002, for example. Only 22 percent were considered emergent while 34 percent were urgent, 19 percent semi-urgent and 10 percent non-urgent. The bottom line is that many of the patients crowding hospital emergency rooms should be going to urgent care centers—where they’d get quality care, probably in less time and almost certainly at a lower cost.

But keep in mind the “fast track” of most emergency rooms can be equally expensive. According to insurance company Humana’s website, “All centers are not created equal, and the difference can affect your wallet. To reduce your costs, choose a free-standing urgent care center, one that isn’t located in a hospital… Your copayment and other costs could be a lot higher if you choose an urgent care center in a hospital.”

Health care providers also stress that when patients with non-life-threatening issues choose an urgent care center instead of an ER, it’s a win-win situation. In an ER, a non-emergent patient may have to wait several hours to be seen for a problem that an urgent care center could treat in a small fraction of the time and money. At the same time, if more non-emergent patients chose urgent care centers, it would alleviate overcrowding and longer than necessary waits in hospital emergency rooms where seconds count.

So how can you determine whether an emergency room or an urgent care center is most appropriate for your illness or injury? In general, an emergency is a situation that requires immediate medical care to prevent death or impairment.

On the other hand, modern urgent care centers, such as Blalock Family & Urgent Care in Mt Pleasant SC, differ from a typical primary care physician’s office in having procedure rooms for stitching lacerations and splinting bone fractures, a nearby radiology department for X-ray services and other diagnostic imaging tests, and a laboratory for onsite lab tests like quick strep tests, rapid flu tests, pregnancy tests, tetanus shots, cholesterol tests and other blood work.  They also can provide breathing treatments for asthmatic patients, high blood pressure stabilization, ear lavage and IV therapy.