With the emergence of urgent care clinics, consumers now have another option when it comes time to receiving medical treatment. Often an illness arises during times when a person’s doctor is not available, such as at night or on weekends. This is when urgent care clinics can help.
But many people are confused about the services urgent care offers, and even more confused about how much those services cost compared to their primary care physician.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the differences and similarities between primary care and urgent care, then break down costs of each.
What Is Primary Care?
Primary care is generally your first line of defense against common illnesses. With your primary care physician, you and your family can
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Well for starters, your doctor will most likely charge an office visit fee of anywhere between $100 - $300 right off the bat. Compare this will a typical urgent care visit that costs between $50 and $100. Patients with high-deductible insurance plans may find going to an urgent care clinic saves them …show more content…
Where can they go to get care? Urgent care clinics treat patients regardless of whether or not they’re insured. Urgent Way works to make sure all of our care is affordable to our community members.
So, is urgent care more expensive? No. But it is more convenient.
Urgent Way is committed to providing quality and affordable care to our neighbors. We understand that immediate access is important and are open 365 days a year.
With locations in Hempstead, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Hicksville, and the Bronx, we are always there when you need us the most.
While we accept most insurance plans, including worker’s compensation, private insurance, Medicaid and Medicare, we also welcome those without insurance and do our best to offer the most affordable rates and payment options.
Urgent Way truly believes that all members of our community deserve quality healthcare at a price they can comfortably afford.
Feel free to stop into any one of our locations, or call and speak with one of our
The challenges that all acute care hospitals and facilities faces are the demand for highly specialized services has increased. The US population is constantly aging and the elderly tend to need more acute care services. Because many people lack health insurance, they tend to use emergency rooms in the hospitals as their source of care. The increase demand in acute care prompted hospitals to expand their facility
Those patients who have health insurance are expected to pay their co-payment immediately upon checking in. You are required to have an insurance card and know your co-payment ahead of time. Typically speaking, co-payments for urgent care range between $35 and $100 per visit. You will have to check to make sure your insurance is accepted at your local urgent care center.
...rd any insurance. It isn’t affordable. If making under a certain amount Medicaid is a huge safety net, but anything over that very small amount there are few options. Some places offer discounts, but it is best ask upfront how much a visit will cost. There are take care clinics in Walgreen’s and possibly CVS (that are popping up all over the city, YAY!) that typically cost less than a conventional doctor visit. On the down side, they only treat a limited number of ailments. I have never been to urgent care, but they are an alternative and could possibly be less costly than an emergency room visit or doctor visit. Pharmacies have started the $5 and $10 list, so that many people can afford a large variety of medications. Even pharmaceutical companies offer coupons for certain meds. There are resources, but some are elusive and some just aren’t affordable.
There has been a shortage of physicians, lack of inpatient beds, problems with ambulatory services, as well as not having proper methods of dealing with patient overflow, all in the past 10 years (Cummings & francescutti, 2006, p.101). The area of concern that have been worse...
When you suffer an injury, you may immediately think that going to the emergency room is the best option. However, this may not always be the case because going to the emergency room can involve you waiting many hours before being treated. Luckily, there are urgent care centers that are capable of addressing many of the more routine emergencies that people may experience. In particular, the following two problems can often be addressed by these facilities.
The main shortcomings of health care in the U.S. include limited access and difficulty in coordination of care. In an 11-country survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, Americans were found to have a greater wait period than adults from other countries. In fact, 20% of adults reported a delay of six or more days to see a doctor or nurse (Schoen, Osborn, Squires, Doty, Pierson & Applebaum, 2010). Access to care is further complicated as only 29% of U.S. primary care practices make arrangements for patients to receive care on evenings, weekends, and holidays (Abrams, Nuzum, Mika & Lawlor, 2011). Physicians also face frustrations in the coordination of care. U.S. physicians are more likely to report that patients cannot afford treatment and are less likely to have electronic patient records that facilitate patient-centered care (Osborn, Schoen, Doty, ...
Despite the established health care facilities in the United States, most citizens do not have access to proper medical care. We must appreciate from the very onset that a healthy and strong nation must have a proper health care system. Such a health system should be available and affordable to all. The cost of health services is high. In fact, the ...
2. Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) - This can be the cheapest plan. It provides you with a network of doctors and hospitals chosen because of your insurance company. You pay a monthly fee for this purpose plan and all visits and prescriptions ought to be approved by your HMO.
Timeliness in medical care can be of the utmost importance. Letting things progress can result in a slippery circle, where a minor infection, untreated end up being life threatening. With increased damage caused by neglecting health care, or waiting on a health care provider, the physical damage, and costs associated increase, often exponentially.
While your primary care physician may treat and/or diagnose your disease, he/she may refer you to a specialist for more specialized treatment of certain aspects of a disease.
I’m coming to you to help make a difference in today's medical costs. I believe that the high costs of medical bills cause a hardship on family incomes.
Apart from that, specialist out-patient clinics also have the same problem. In general, patients visit general out-patient clinic or private family doctors which were made referrals due to special cases. However, patients should register again and keep waiting for the specialist out-patient clinics.
A lot of the time, a “frequent flyer” will call out for emergency medical services, receive care inside their homes, and then refuse transport to hospital. The base-pay for a ride to hospital on an ambulance, is $400 dollars. That is starting, if the emergency medical services personal administrate medicine or treatment, the cost can rise up to $5,000 dollars. For patients that do not have medical insurance, this tab is picked up by tax payers. The National Fire Protection Association tracks all 9-1-1 calls annually, said fire departments nationwide responded to about 15.7 million total medical aid calls in 2008. Using that data, the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch, said about 20% of the calls are classified as non life-threatening and don't require a paramedic (Kavilanz). The ethical duty of any emergency medical services personal is to respond to any call without any judgment. Departments everywhere will always respond to a skinned knee, just as fast as they will respond to a school shooting. This is, not only adding additional stress on the medic squad, but it is distracting emergency medical services personal from focusing on potential actual life-threatening
Care can be given in different ways: informally by a family member or friend, or formally through primary and secondary care, social care or medical care. Primary care is a GP, dentist or optician – the people you normally see when you first have a problem (K101, unit 2, p. 74). Secondary care is any other health professional you may come into contact with following involvement in primary care.
Primary care are generally physician owned, physician’s usually divides their available time for walk-in and scheduled appointments. They generally provide appointments on first come first serve basis it can be either walk-in or through telephone booking. Usually they reserve some slots for urgent cases. Demand spillover is major drawback of this system. Specialty care are generally focuses on specific treatments or complex treatments. They follow open source appointments but in most of cases they require primary physical referral. Elective surgery appointments are scheduled well in advance and urgent cases are given first priority. They usually maintain more operation rooms to accommodate urgent cases. And surgeries are performed on both outpatients and