The Growth Of Urgent Care Clinics

By Author: Sailb Stiv
Total Articles: 19
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While patients experiencing life threatening conditions such as strokes, heart attacks, blood loss and other bodily trauma should go directly to the emergency room (ER), patients with less severe symptoms and conditions can save time and money by instead visiting and urgent care clinic in which they can often be accommodated more quickly. Another major difference is that while emergency rooms are always open, most urgent care clinics are open daily but not overnight.

You may have noticed a rise in the number of urgent care clinics in West Los Angeles and the surrounding areas in the last several years. This is because the medical industry is working to solve the problem of overcrowded hospitals and hospital beds, which may be in part due to the number of overnight stays from emergency rooms. Estimates presented in a recent article from the Journal Of Urgent Care Medicine state that as much as 70% of emergency room cases could have been treated in other settings such as an Urgent Care clinic or doctor’s office. Urgent care clinics are working to cut down on the number of unnecessary procedures and stays in hospitals, ...
... which will help the medical industry on the whole.

Because of the more relaxed clinical setting of an urgent care clinic as opposed to the cold and traumatic experience of an emergency room visit, urgent care clinics have the capacity to offer a much higher level of customer care that can not only easy patients initial jitters but can open the door for a lasting physician-patient relationship. That unrushed one-on-one time can provide a more organic and comfortable experience, especially for children and the elderly.

Urgent care facilities exist to provide care for patients with injuries and illnesses that may be painful but not severe enough to justify a trip to an emergency room. It is important to realize that while an urgent care facility can potentially refer you to the nearest emergency room if your symptoms call for more intensive care, an emergency room can treat you and generally will not refer you to an urgent care clinic.

While many health concerns can be attended to at an urgent care clinic, there are still a number of conditions that should always be handled in an emergency room setting. If you experience shortness of breath, blood loss, sudden compromised vision, chest pain, or loss of consciousness, you should be taken to an emergency room immediately – these are often signs of life threatening conditions that should be attended to at once.

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