How to Know Whether to Go to Your Doctor, or Visit Urgent Care
Nov 17, 2023
Relying too much on urgent care for
treatment might mean you miss bigger health issues
You’ve got a sore throat and want to get tested for strep. Do you
try to make an appointment with your primary care doctor, or go to the nearby
walk-in clinic?
The
ubiquity of walk-in and urgent-care clinics has changed the way many of us seek
treatment for what we think are minor ailments such as the flu,
pinkeye or a pulled muscle. Instead of trying to make an appointment with our
primary care doctor, who might not be able to see you the same day, we often
just go to the walk-in clinic.
In many cases, that’s perfectly
fine—and there are some instances where urgent care centers are
better-equipped, doctors say. But relying too much on urgent care for treatment
might mean you miss bigger health issues or neglect important preventive care
like vaccinations and health
screenings.
“The urgent care center is going to
focus on the problem at hand and move on, but their primary care is going to
try to think more comprehensively,” says Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a professor of
healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School who has researched urgent care
clinics.
The number of urgent care centers
has grown by about 14% every year
since 2016, says Lou Ellen Horwitz, CEO of the Urgent Care Association, a trade
group. Mehrotra’s research found that the number of urgent care center visits
per person more than doubled between 2008 and 2015.
What urgent care is good
for
Urgent care is a great place to go
to address immediate medical concerns when you can’t get an appointment with
your doctor or it’s a weekend or evening and the office is closed. (If it’s potentially
life-threatening, though, you should go to the ER.)
Urgent care centers can be better
suited to treat certain injuries than
your doctor’s office. Sprains, strains, cuts
and burns are all things that urgent care centers are good at treating, says
Dr. Rupal Bhingradia, a family physician who works at an urgent care clinic in
New York.
Many urgent care centers have equipment
that allows them to do more than your average primary care practice.
“They’ll often have X-ray
equipment, CT scans, ability to do sutures, IV and so forth,” says Mehrotra.
“In general most primary care practices cannot provide those kinds of services.”
If you go to urgent care for a
flare-up of a chronic condition, such as asthma or
migraines, make sure to tell your primary care doctor afterward so that they
can keep track of your episodes and potentially adjust your treatment plan.
“There’s a lot of chronic disease
where the number of episodes actually matters,” says Dr. Ari Friedman, an
emergency medicine physician and assistant professor at the University of
Pennsylvania, who works in a trauma center and researches urgent care.
For example, after a certain number
of migraines, you reach a point where you meet the criteria for a preventive
medication. And in children with recurrent ear infections, there’s a threshold
for when to put in ear tubes.
There are certain times where you
should skip urgent care and head straight to the emergency department, says
Friedman. This includes if you have any symptoms that might be a heart
attack or stroke, such as chest pain or face numbness. If you’re
struggling to breathe or have severe abdominal pain, it makes more sense to
head to the ER rather than wasting time at an urgent care clinic that may end
up sending you there, he says.
In addition, if you have a child
under 5, Mehrotra suggests going to a pediatric urgent care center if you can,
even though adult ones will often see children.
When to see your primary
care doctor
The number one challenge with
urgent care centers is that they generally don’t have access to your electronic
health record, which details your medical history and other important medical
information, says Mehrotra.
An urgent care doctor isn’t tracking your health over
the long term or looking for patterns that may require new treatments. So
especially if you have a complicated health history or chronic illnesses,
relying too much on urgent care for treatment may mean you miss bigger
problems.
A primary care doctor may also look
for other conditions than the one you’ve come in for—screening for, say, anxiety even
if you have come in complaining of stomach pain. Or they’ll also offer you a
chance to get a flu shot if you’ve come in for a sprain.
Cost can also be a factor when
deciding whether to go to your doctor’s office or urgent center, says Mehrotra.
It typically will cost more to go to an urgent care clinic than your primary
care doctor’s office because they typically have more overhead expenses with
longer hours and extra equipment. But it will be less than going to the
emergency room.
You shouldn’t use an urgent care
clinic as a replacement for a family physician or primary care doctor, says
Bhingradia. Primary care doctors will manage your overall care rather than
simply treating a one-off complaint, and should be your first point of contact
for routine healthcare needs such as vaccinations, screenings and treatment of
chronic conditions, she says.
In addition, you should wait to see
your doctor rather than go to urgent care for things like non-urgent medication
refills or adjustments, says Friedman, because they know your medical
history.
Source: Wall Street Journal