loubiblu

I just got a call from my son's tennis coach to say he'd had a fall when running for a shot and had landed awkwardly on his hip. As I was driving to the courts it occurred to me that I didn't know what the best or more appropriate treatment might be - emergency room, urgent care, something else?

I guess I'm lucky that I've never needed to get medical attention for the kids before. Apart from school physicals and jabs when we arrived, last time the 18 yr old saw a doc was when he was 8, must be 5-6 years ago for the 16 yr old and as a baby for my 12 yr old.

Turns out that by the time I got to the courts, he was up and moving, albeit gingerly! He'll have a cracking bruise in the morning, but he stayed, ran off the hip pain and won his match

Still left me pondering the fact that I'm clueless when it comes to navigating the U.S. Healthcare system...

SanDiegogirl

Presume you have health insurance.

If at point of accident/illness you feel the person is in need of immediate/urgent attention call 911. The medics will then assess the next move.

If urgent care office is nearby and injured/ill person can move about take them there if you want them seen/treated immediately

No urgent care but hospital emergency room nearby and person can move take them there if you want them seen/treated immediately.

loubiblu

Yes, insured through husband's company. It was more of a reflection on not bring experienced in accessing medical treatment here. Thanks for clarifying emergency room v urgent care.

durham_lad

great advice.

For non-emergencies, but urgent care, it would be good to know ahead of time which urgent care/24 hr clinics are in the network of your health insurance because choosing an out-of-network clinic can prove to be very expensive. We have several urgent care centers close to us but only 2 are in-network.

loubiblu

^ This

I've no idea which facilities are in network. Wasn't something I considered - lots to get used to.

sir_eccles

Save the ER for actual life threatening stuff like being shot or dying in a car crash and perhaps a heart attack.

Get to know your local urgent cares. Some are better than others. Cvs minute clinics are ok if you just need an antibiotics rx but nothing more. The better independent urgent cares are often staffed by actual doctors and can do xrays set bones and deal with many serious things I.e. the stuff you might go to a British a&e for.

Check your insurance. Mine for example is $20 copay full stop for urgent care but $150 for the er plus you will get deluged by separate bills from half a dozen people who looked at you for five seconds while you were in the er.

Noorah101

See exactly what your insurance covers. Avoid ER if you can. I vote for Urgent Care.

I used to go see my own physician for everything, with a $20 copay. Then she moved her office further away and it's a hassle to get there for anything more than my required yearly well woman exam. So I go to Urgent Care just a couple of blocks away for almost everything. They have a $25 copay so it's almost the same price as going to my own doctor, and I get seen right away. I've only ever been to ER once, and it took hours and hours of sitting in an uncomfortable chair just waiting to be seen...and it's $100!

Rene

civilservant

Urgent care here too - ER is reserved for life threatening injuries and conditions (heart attack, heavy uncontrolled bleeding, major broken bones such as a leg etc etc)

United Healthcare just announced to our group plan that they will no longer pay for ER visits if they are deemed to be non-emergency. Quite how you determine that is anyones guess, because if I feel like I'm having a heart attack I'm going to the ER - even if it ends up being something minor.

kins

I got the health insurance company to send me a list of in-network urgent care centers and ERs, and it's stuck to the fridge and also saved in our Dropbox account.

If in doubt you can call urgent care and ask them if they can handle what you think you're bringing in. When my daughter appeared to have broken her elbow we called urgent care and they said as long as it wasn't a compound fracture they were likely to be able to deal with it. They X-rayed, splinted and referred her to a specialist. Cost much less than the ER and meant no waiting around.

We fairly often go to urgent care for X-rays and ear infections. Almost never go to the ER.

Pulaski

All good advice, to which I would add, first and foremost check out and know your own primary care physician's hours and capabilities. Ours has been muscling in on the "urgent care" niche, and now has walk-in hours all day Saturday and part of Sunday, ...... for a billed cost about 2/3 that of any of the local urgent care clinics.
You go to urgent care for an ear infection? ..... Is there anything you go to your primary care physician for?

kins

Almost every time my kids have had an injury or ear infection it's been a Sat or Sun and the PCP is not working. The urgent care is the same distance from the house and costs the same amount.

scrubbedexpat091

If I waited for my GP to have an appointment, I'd either be healed or deaf.... Of course not in the US, so wait times to see GP can be idiotically long. My GP is currently is booking appointments for January at the earliest.

Luckily we have 1 walk in clinic where a random GP will be working most days.

Longish waits is one big downside to government funded healthcare. Being a small town our hospital ER is more akin to an urgent care in the US.

kodokan

If it makes you feel any better, my last brush with the medical system was:

- daughter fell off bike riding to school
- was unable to move her arm
- suspected a broken wrist
- first phone call was to my friend who's a nurse, to say 'um... so what does one do, exactly, where should I take her?'
(Urgent care, and yes, it was broken - they X-rayed, soft-casted, and referred me to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon for the next day.)

I've got better - we've recently moved to a new state, and last week I did actually go onto my insurer's website, and look up the nearest in-network urgent care. It doesn't appear to have X-Ray facilities, but I expect if I needed that in the very near future before I found an alternative, they could point me at one that did.

kins

Actually, the children's paediatrician is English so sometimes we go in just for a nice chat and a cup of tea. Bit expensive at $125 a pop but there you go

Redwing

Our local ER's business is down a lot, due to an urgent care clinic opening in the last year, and walk in clinics. We normally go to our family practice, which consists of 3 doctors, and 4 NPs. If they can't see you fairly soon, they send you to the walk in clinic, which they own across the way, and is staffed by one of their own NPs.