Hello, I’m Dr. David Lemak, Tahoe Forest Urgent Care Medical Director. I was asked to talk to you today about how to decide when it’s appropriate for a patient to go to urgent care versus going to the emergency department. Why? Because we at Tahoe Forest want you, the patient, to be at the right location for the care you need at that time.
So that said, what are the kind of pros and cons of going to the ER versus urgent care? Well, almost everybody understands what the ER can do. They’re there 24/7. They’re capable of handling all kinds of life-threatening disorders. They can do all kinds of advanced testing. They have access to specialists. You can be admitted directly to the hospital once you’ve been seen in the ED. Ambulances always go to the emergency room.
What’s the downside? Well, we all know that the copay for the ER can be pretty high by comparison to other locations. Wait times are often a bit longer in the ER. It’s not a quiet environment, it’s stressful. There’s lots of pretty sick and injured people in the ER that you may have to share some space with, and it may not be the right location for minor or urgent kinds of care. That said, the ER generally sees about one-third of their cases as really truly emergent, so they do have the capability of handling less severe things certainly as well.
Why urgent care, then? Well, it turns out that urgent care developed out of a need by all of us for a place where we can go to take care of things quickly, but usually wait times are pretty short in urgent care. It’s perfect for minor illnesses.
Guess the best way of kind of distinguishing between minor, going to urgent care, and maybe needing to go to the ER, is severe. Think of the word severe. If whatever the patient has is a severe condition, they’re better off going to the ER.
What’s the downside to going to urgent care if you happen to have something that might need to go to the ER? Well, we would have to transfer you over there. That’s not an unusual occurrence, but we’d rather have you in the right place at the right time. One other reason why people might get sent from urgent care to the ER is because of the capacity for advanced testing and specialty access.
So what would be some examples? You know, if you’ve got chest pain, you’ve got somebody who thinks you might have stroke-like symptoms, they have a severe injury, especially like a motor vehicle accident, a fall off of a mountain bike going downhill, they have severe abdominal pain, they have had a loss of consciousness or a seizure, they have what seems to be a severe allergic reaction, serious burns, big lacerations, clearly broken bones, that goes to the ER.
Go to urgent care for, well, clearly we can manage very well all those things that would be categorized as sprains and strains, minor lacerations, earaches, sore throats, mild asthma-related conditions, urinary tract infections, just about any kind of a rash, and then anything that requires like a refill of something and you can’t get into your primary care provider. Those are all perfectly appropriate for urgent care.
So, thanks for watching. I’m Dr. David Lemak, Urgent Care Medical Director at Tahoe Forest. We’re glad to see you wherever you need to be, and hopefully this provides you some assistance in deciding where you should go when the need arises.
