Every single day, many people both young and old will get hurt or ill, and when this happens, the victim may need to visit an urgent care clinic or emergency care centers right away. Overall, emergency care is for serious or even life-threatening medical cases, while urgent care clinics are suitable for minor medical issues. When a victim needs help, a nearby party may look up urgent care centers in the area or emergency care as needed. Looking up these clinics online may look like “emergency room in los ranchos NM”, and if a search like “emergency room in los ranchos” doesn’t turn up desirable results, the seeker can broaden their search to find emergency rooms within a certain mile radius. Even smaller towns such as Los Ranchos may have medical care sites, or a neighboring town might have one. With a search like “emergency room in los ranchos”, medical help will never be far away. And if the patient needs help at an odd time of day, a query such as “24 hour emergency room in los ranchos” will work fine. The results may also list the name and address of all local healthcare providers.
Emergency Care Done Right
Emergency care, such as in a hospital’s ER, is best for patients who are in life-threatening or otherwise serious condition. At such clinics, doctors and physicians will have the right training and medicine to save a life. For example, a patient may have suffered a broken arm or broken leg, or they may have sustained injuries to the head or eyeballs. Not only that, but a patient may be brought into the ER if they have bullet wounds or stab wounds, which might be be bleeding heavily. Chest pain and difficulty breathing will also merit a trip to the ER, since those conditions might turn life-threatening at any moment, if they are not already. A patient who just suffered a heart attack or a stoke will also need the ER. Meanwhile, what about cases of abdominal pain? Most abdominal pain cases are actually harmless, but if that pain is sudden, severe, and/or long lasting, then the underlying cause may be quite serious and call for the ER.
While the ER can save a life, it should not be treated as a catch-all medical care site. Visiting emergency centers like this is time consuming and expensive, and it is impractical for minor medical cases that only require the attention of a walk in clinic’s staff. Around 40-65% of ER cases can and should have been addressed with urgent care, so discretion is recommended. But what if it is not clear what level of care a patient may need? If this happens, the victim’s helper may look for hybrid clinics; that is, healthcare providers that offer both urgent and emergency services side by side. Not all clinics are like this, but some are, and they may come up in a search for either urgent or emergency care.
Urgent Care Clinics
Meanwhile, as suggested above, minor medical cases can be handled efficiently at an urgent care clinic or a walk in clinic. The good news is that this is a large industry, and since the year 2000, around 2,500 urgent care clinics have been built all over the United States. Often, these are small, independent clinics that are run with nurse practitioners and physicians who can handle lesser medical cases, and those clinics may sometimes form local networks with one another. Guests may inquire about which healthcare insurance policies each clinic accepts, and a clinic that is running smoothly may see three patients per hour on average. A guest might have a wait time of around 15 minutes (that’s not an exact figure, though).
Guests may visit a walk in clinic for medicinal relief from the common cold or flu during influenza season, and they can also visit the pharmacy on site to get a prescription drug refill. Around 80% of these clinics offer treatment for bone fractures, and nearly all of them will also treat wrist or ankle sprains as well. The nurses on staff may provide bandages and stitches for shallow cuts and wounds, and they may also provide lotion and ointment for skin rashes and sunburn.
