Urgent Care Kansas City – What Makes a Quality Urgent Care

What makes up a quality urgent care treatment facility many people don’t know. Common traits shared by good urgent care centers are as follows:

• Easy Access
• Highly Trained Physicians and highly trained staff members
• Services Offered by the Urgent Care Center
• Latest in Equipment and Technology
• Accepts a variety of insurance coverages

Frequently patients have no idea they can be seen at an urgent care facility for their non-life threatening injuries. By avoiding the emergencies rooms for these conditions, patients and our health care system can reduce skyrocketing costs. Urgent centers fill the void between routine doctor visits and life-threatening emergencies.

Since emergency rooms are designed to handle true emergencies, which are life threatening illnesses or severe trauma, they must be equipped and staffed to handle such emergencies. As such, it costs a lot of money to operate and maintain an emergency room. So when a patient presents to the emergency room with a sore throat, they will be treated but at an enormous cost to the patient and to the health care system.

Because emergency rooms are designed to see and treat serious illnesses and trauma, time is of the essence. The quicker emergency rooms can deliver care, the better the chance of survival for the patient. Therefore, patients who present to the emergency rooms with small cuts or a sore throat or an ear ache are not seen until all of the other sicker patients have been seen first. This is called TRIAGE.

For the patients who are out of town, new to a town, or perhaps it is the weekend or after 5 pm or they really don’t have a doctor and they have an urgent problem but it isn’t life threatening — what are they supposed to do ? If they don’t know about urgent care centers, they will seek care at an emergency room.

Urgent care centers are the ideal place to be seen and treated for your non-life threatening medical problems. You can avoid the long waits and high prices of an emergency room and receive that same level of care in a timely and economical fashion. If you’re having a heart attack, by all means seek treatment at an emergency room, that is what they are designed to do. However, if you have a sore throat and your doctor isn’t around, consider being treated at an urgent care center. Sure your doctor won’t be there, but you’ll find out it is much better equipped and the doctors are excellent.

Urgent care centers equip themselves to handle routine and urgent medical issues and by doing so control their costs. Because infrastructure costs are controlled, treatment costs are dramatically less than an emergency room. Therefore urgent care centers are the best solution to control costs for the patient and our health care system.

High end urgent care facilities will often offer services such as:

• Urgent care for children and adults
• Services for cuts, fractures, common injuries and common ailments
• State-of-the-art lab and digital x-ray on site
• Some from of assisted transportation
• Vaccinations and physicals for school, sports and pre-employment
• Drug and alcohol screening
• Worker’s Compensation Injury treatment and reporting
• Service for physical therapy
• Pre-offer insurance physicals
• On site medication available
• Services for Basic Counseling
• Pleasant and clean environment

Often Urgent Care Centers are staffed by a variety of different kinds of doctors or nurse practitioners. However the best doctors usually to staff an Urgent Care Center are emergency room physicians. The mark of a good emergency room physician is not only their experience but also if they are board certified. Board certification is the pinnacle of educational achievement for health care providers.

The health care system welcomes urgent care centers. By providing prompt, high quality service at a fraction of the cost of an emergency room, urgent care centers impact the cost of health care much less. More often, urgent care centers can deliver care in a less stressful and friendlier environment that is not sterile like a hospital.