4 Things to Know So You Can Make Medical Decisions For Your Family

When you have a medical need it’s important that you know where to go and what to do to get help. This is especially true when your children are involved. Should you take them to family urgent care or to the emergency room? Read on to familiarize yourself with the differences and which you should choose.

Know What Your Family Urgent Care Can Do

A 24 hour walk in clinic is perfectly set up to treat colds and flu, minor scrapes, cuts, and burns, sprains, and fractures, or to provide immunizations. If someone has an ear infection or you suspect a UTI, or if one of your kids has had a run-in with poison ivy or an insect bite, family urgent care is a great place to take them. The clinic can provide care after hours when doctors offices are closed.

Know What Your Emergency Room is For

The emergency center gives the most effective treatment for life-threatening injuries or trauma. If anyone has difficulty breathing or you suspect a heart attack, if there is uncontrolled bleeding or someone has lost consciousness, take them to the emergency room. The emergency room is also the best place after a major accident or trauma, a severe allergic reaction, or any major bone breaks.

Know What to Expect in the Emergency Room

An emergency room is set up to triage everyone who arrives and treat them in order of severity, not in order of arrival. This means that while you or your child might be genuinely acutely miserable with the fever, chills, and aches that accompany the flu, you might still wait hours to be seen if people are coming into the emergency room with life-threatening issues. The average wait is almost two and a half hours.

Know What to Expect in the Family Urgent Care Center

The walk in clinic is designed to provide care quickly for medical issues that are not life-threatening. The average wait for a walk-in patient is 15 to 45 minutes. This is because the care available is more limited and specific than that offered by the emergency room.

Know the Other Benefits of Family Urgent Care Centers

Cost is another huge benefit to seeking help at a medical clinic for minor injuries and illnesses. Not only will you and your child be seen much more quickly than in an emergency room, but the much more cheaply, too. Urgent care centers don’t have the enormous overhead that a hospital must maintain in order to be able to treat every type of medical emergency that arises, so the stitches that cost $1,000 at the emergency room will run between $100 and $200 at your family urgent care facility.

Know the differences between urgent care and emergency care now so you can make the right decision when you or a child have a sudden urgent medical need. That way you’ll know how to get the right treatments and services when you need them. Look for family urgent care near you so you’ll know where to go when the moment comes.