If you have a regular doctor, have you ever called his or her office after 5 pm or on Saturday or Sunday? The answering machine usually says, “If you think you have an emergency, go to your nearest emergency room.”
The message was clear. You are now faced with having to make the decision on what type of care is needed. Visits to emergency departments are staggering with close to 115 million patients treated during 2005. This represents a 26 percent increase in patients over the past decade compared to a 12.3 percent increase in the countries population. During this same time period 15 percent of hospitals ERs were closed. The number of patients results in busy ERs with the average wait exceeding 3.3 hours. Patients are treated based on a system of triage with most serious being seen first.
Today, in addition to the Hospital Emergency Department you have the following options available:
- In 2000, medical treatment began to be offered at small offices in retail stores with onsite pharmacies. They go by several different names like Redi-Med, Quick-Care and Medical Mart. These mini clinics are popping up at major chain stores like Walgreens, CVS and Wal-Mart. Currently there are over 400 location with an estimated two thousands more expected to open within a couple of years. For about $80, a patient can be treated by a physician assistant or a nurse practioner for a minor acute illness such as strep throat, upset stomach or headache. These retail clinics are not true urgent care centers, because of the limited level of care that can be provided without a physician or x-ray facilities on site.
- Urgent-care centers first appeared about 20 years ago, but didn’t catch on widely among consumers, who preferred to see their own doctor or seek care in a hospital ER. But the industry began resurging in the mid-1990s, and demand has increased in recent years as more consumers experience long waits in the emergency room, or wait weeks to get an appointment with their own doctor. Urgent-care-center physicians and other medical staffers can put casts on broken bones, sew up lacerations, provide intravenous fluids for dehydrated patients, and deploy advanced life-support equipment for both adults and children. There are currently more than 8,000 urgent-care centers around the country, including about 1,200 affiliated with hospitals, and that number is expected to expand.
Not all the 115.3 million emergency-room visits in 2005 were true emergencies. According to the CDC, only 5.5% needed to be seen immediately, with 9.8% triaged as needing to be seen within 14 minutes, 33% within 15 minutes to an hour, and 21% as “semi-urgent,” needing to be seen one to two hours. About 14% were evaluated as “non-urgent,” meaning they could be treated in anywhere from two to 24 hours.