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> For non-US readers: Somebody made an incorrect decision to take him to an urgent care office, which requires immediate insurance or payment Is this something

> For non-US readers: Somebody made an incorrect decision to take him to an urgent care office, which requires immediate insurance or payment Is this something that all US readers would know? What about people who have never been to such a place? > You're supposed to use urgent care for minor things like an earache or prescription refill. Surely urgency comes in degrees and someone with the symptoms of COVID-19 is surely in more urgent need than someone who has an earache. I realize that the name is just what it is called; I'm not really arguing for a change of name, after all it's not my country, but it does seem quite plausible that someone might go to such a place under the (mis)apprehension that urgent needs would be attended to and payment be dealt with afterward.

zamadatix 7y ago
I doubt most people here realize the emergency room can't refuse a real emergency due to lack of insurance but I almost guarantee fear of large hospital bills is the reason the urgent care was the first stop, it's the cheapest place to get care without needing an appointment. So unfortunately I don't think it was confusion about what an urgent care offers (it's a pretty well known service for the above reason) as much of fear of cost over going straight to the emergency room.
leetcrew 7y ago
it definitely has the potential to be misleading, but it makes sense in the overall hierarchy of urgency. in increasing order of urgency: general practitioners office, urgent care, emergency room. I believe each tier is also more expensive (although idk about urgent care vs GP's office). if you have insurance/money, you really want to avoid going to the emergency room when you don't need it because it's very expensive. the catch is, if you're broke, you go to the ER for everything because they can't turn you away and the debt doesn't really matter.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>Is this something that all US readers would know? They should. "Urgent Care" "Immediate Care" etc are oftenin office parks next to lawyers/realtors/dentists. They are where you go when you do not have a primary care provider, or can't be seen by your primary care provider, and are sick. You take your kids to them for physicals for their school sport or when you have a bad cough and don't want to/can't wait a week for your doctor to squeeze you in. You walk in, sit in a waiting room with 10-20 sick strangers and wait sometimes for hours to be seen, then meet one of umpteen doctors working that you've probably never seen before and will never see again that looks at you for maybe a minute and writes a prescription or tells you to go to your doctor. They are 100% for acute, non-life threatening illnesses and injury.
fiftyfifty 7y ago
In my part of the US they've changed the names of a lot of these places from "Urgent Care" to "Walk-in Clinic", which is really what they are: a doctors office you can go to without an appointment for pressing but non-life threatening issues. For point of reference the Emergency Room is where an ambulance would take you if you called for one. If you are in a similar type of life threatening situation and you choose not to call an ambulance but to drive yourself most Americans know they need to go to the ER.
salawat 7y ago
You actually need to be really careful with Urgent Care clinics, because some work out an arrangement where they are an "extension" of the hospital's ER. What does this mean? It means they get to inflate what they charge you for certain procedures because they're "an ER", but somehow aren't bound by all the other regulations hospitals are. In short: be bloody paranoid. The only pattern I've noticed in Urgent Care centers using this weird billing hack is they tend to offer some of the more advanced imaging services in-house.

zamadatix 7y ago

I doubt most people here realize the emergency room can't refuse a real emergency due to lack of insurance but I almost guarantee fear of large hospital bills is the reason the urgent care was the first stop, it's the cheapest place to get care without needing an appointment. So unfortunately I don't think it was confusion about what an urgent care offers (it's a pretty well known service for the above reason) as much of fear of cost over going straight to the emergency room.

leetcrew 7y ago

it definitely has the potential to be misleading, but it makes sense in the overall hierarchy of urgency. in increasing order of urgency: general practitioners office, urgent care, emergency room. I believe each tier is also more expensive (although idk about urgent care vs GP's office). if you have insurance/money, you really want to avoid going to the emergency room when you don't need it because it's very expensive. the catch is, if you're broke, you go to the ER for everything because they can't turn you away and the debt doesn't really matter.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>Is this something that all US readers would know? They should. "Urgent Care" "Immediate Care" etc are oftenin office parks next to lawyers/realtors/dentists. They are where you go when you do not have a primary care provider, or can't be seen by your primary care provider, and are sick. You take your kids to them for physicals for their school sport or when you have a bad cough and don't want to/can't wait a week for your doctor to squeeze you in. You walk in, sit in a waiting room with 10-20 sick strangers and wait sometimes for hours to be seen, then meet one of umpteen doctors working that you've probably never seen before and will never see again that looks at you for maybe a minute and writes a prescription or tells you to go to your doctor. They are 100% for acute, non-life threatening illnesses and injury.

fiftyfifty 7y ago

In my part of the US they've changed the names of a lot of these places from "Urgent Care" to "Walk-in Clinic", which is really what they are: a doctors office you can go to without an appointment for pressing but non-life threatening issues. For point of reference the Emergency Room is where an ambulance would take you if you called for one. If you are in a similar type of life threatening situation and you choose not to call an ambulance but to drive yourself most Americans know they need to go to the ER.

salawat 7y ago

You actually need to be really careful with Urgent Care clinics, because some work out an arrangement where they are an "extension" of the hospital's ER. What does this mean? It means they get to inflate what they charge you for certain procedures because they're "an ER", but somehow aren't bound by all the other regulations hospitals are. In short: be bloody paranoid. The only pattern I've noticed in Urgent Care centers using this weird billing hack is they tend to offer some of the more advanced imaging services in-house.