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Traditionally, I knew that when one has a medical emergency that can't wait for a doctor's opinion, you go to the emergency room. Now, I see that there are Urgent Care centers around.

So when would one go there vs an actual emergency room? For example, if someone thinks that they're having a heart attack, stroke, should one go to an Urgent care? What if one has a broken bone? Potential appendicitis?

healthy_man
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    A suspected stroke or heart attack should result in a call to 911 (or whatever your local emergency number is). Always. No discussion, no debate. – Carey Gregory Sep 23 '19 at 03:47
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    "there are Urgent Care centers around" - where in the world is this? – Arsak Sep 23 '19 at 06:39
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    Ditto to Carey. @Arsak UC are common in the USA, and they have different degrees of acuity that they can manage. I'm not sure a definitive answer can be given since it will differ in different areas / UC types, but there are some things that are never cases for urgent care. Heart attacks strokes etc like Carey said are 911 cases - who will take you to the Emergency Room at a hospital able to manage the potential problems, not an Urgent Care. – DoctorWhom Sep 23 '19 at 14:36
  • It's worth noting that urgent care centers have become common sources of 911 calls in the US. A significant number of people go to them with complaints that should have been 911 calls from their home in the first place. Fortunately, they're usually good about triaging rapidly and getting such patients into an ambulance on their way to an ER. – Carey Gregory Sep 23 '19 at 23:49

2 Answers2

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Urgent care is for things that your normal physician could treat, but you are outside their hours or unable to get an appointment within a reasonable time for the condition.

Emergency rooms are for medical emergencies.

Examples of things that can be treated in Urgent Care (via the University of Michigan):

Cold/flu, sprained ankle, broken bones in wrist/hand/ankle/foot without severe displacement or skin punctured, sore throat, nausea, minor cuts, eye/ear infection, minor burns

Things for which you should go to the ER (or better, call 911/emergency services):

Extremely high fever, severe trauma, broken bones severely displaced or puncturing skin, difficulty breathing, heart attack/stroke, uncontrolled bleeding, poisoning, major burns

In summary, if you could die, go to the ER. If you have a non-life threatening acute medical issue, urgent care. If in question or unsure, go to the ER.

Bryan Krause
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  • +1 for your first paragraph. – Carey Gregory Sep 24 '19 at 00:55
  • I would change your last sentence as it contradicts the advice given here in the UK. Here in the UK there is a big problem with ER (A&E - Accident and Emergency here) being full of non-urgent patients. If you are unsure if you need ER or urgent care, you should go to urgent care or your doctor. Here in the UK there is also an urgent medical advice line too (call 111). – Chris Rogers Sep 24 '19 at 08:46
  • @ChrisRogers I don't doubt that's a problem, but I'm hesitant to change the advice. I did add a note about calling a medical advice line, though. I'm much more worried about people who underestimate their circumstance (especially acute ischemic events) delaying their time to hospital than causing some delay in the ER/ED/A&E - see Carey's comment on the OP. If you go to emergency and they tell you it's going to be a 2 hr wait, you can probably pack up and go to urgent care. – Bryan Krause Sep 24 '19 at 15:17
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    @ChrisRogers Rest assured that American ERs are chock full of people with non-emergent complaints. A large percentage of those people are there because they lack healthcare insurance and ERs are the only healthcare available to them. In many large hospitals they set aside a separate waiting room for non-emergent patients and a triage nurse directs you to one or the other when you arrive. (Another benefit of calling 911 because you'll skip that step since EMS will triage you on the way.) – Carey Gregory Sep 24 '19 at 19:03
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    And I agree with @BryanKrause's concerns. You'd be amazed how long people will put up with chest pain and other alarming symptoms. Many times when I asked when the pain began the answer has been hours or even days previously. My favorite was the nice little old lady whose chest pain started at 10pm but she waited until 9am the next morning because she "didn't want to disturb us late at night." ("Us" being EMS.) – Carey Gregory Sep 24 '19 at 19:06
  • But the one thing I would never, ever recommend is calling the advice line offered by insurance companies. You'll be talking to a nurse whose job it is to minimize costs by keeping you out of an ambulance and out of a hospital, not to keep you healthy. And if they can't do that, their next job is to send you to the facility with the lowest contractual costs, not the most appropriate facility. I've actually had to get on the phone with such nurses and tell them I'm overruling them and hang up on them. – Carey Gregory Sep 24 '19 at 19:11
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    @CareyGregory I'm going to go back to my original wording on that, for the reasons you describe. Although, I'll say my individual experience with such a service was the opposite of yours (they recommended I call 911, though ultimately I was fine) - I suspect in a litigation-happy country like the US lawsuit concerns would dwarf the cost-savings, but given that may be a wrong assumption I don't want to send people who need immediate help down that path. – Bryan Krause Sep 24 '19 at 19:15
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    @BryanKrause I'm sure experiences with them vary and some, if not most, give good advice, but I've definitely seen them give advice I thought was not in the patient's best interest. So I wouldn't know how to tell people which insurance company nurses to trust. I wish the US had a nationwide number like the UK's 111. – Carey Gregory Sep 24 '19 at 20:40
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Nice visual summary from the practice https://urgentcarelajolla.com/services/ (ER = Emergency Room):

enter image description here

Franck Dernoncourt
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