Is a Walk In Clinic and an Urgent Care Facility the Same?

Though there is crossover in many instances, a walk in clinic and an urgent care facility have several important differences. They have both become popular as alternatives to both the emergency room and a standard doctor's appointment in a society where people are too impatient for either solution. The ER, except in cases of true emergency, can be a nightmare to visit and will almost certainly cost a fortune. A doctor's appointment in three weeks for a cold that you're dealing with now is beyond worthless. These places certainly serve an important role, but it's wise to know what you're walking into. Here are some of their differences. The Walk In Clinic Designed primarily as an alternative for people who don't have a regular physician, these facilities give people the option of skipping the appointment-making necessity found in most areas of health care. They have perfectly filled the function of treating people with illnesses such as strep throat or acute allergy infection. If you need a prescription to start fighting a cold or other minor illness, making an appointment that might not come until it has cleared up on its own makes no sense at all. Yet that was the position many patients were put in before the advent of these alternatives. Urgent Care It should be noted that sometimes a walk in clinic will double as an urgent care facility, making the differences more difficult to enumerate. That said, most of them serve different functions, even if those differences are slight. Urgent care facilities are geared more towards providing patients with an alternative to the emergency room, rather than a doctor's appointment. Broken arms, minor burns, cuts, and other injuries that require medical treatment but aren't life threatening are perfect for the urgent care facility. These kinds of minor injuries and illnesses often have to wait hours at the ER. Urgent care can often reduce that waiting time substantially. Differences Generally speaking, you're going to pay much less for the privilege of visiting a walk in clinic than you will at the urgent care desk. With insurance, the co-pay should be similar to that of a physician visit. At urgent care, the co-pay is going to fall somewhere between a trip to a specialist and what you would pay at the ER. One important thing to remember: even at urgent care, the policy is to treat patients on a first-come, first-served basis. This is what separates them from the ER, which treats people on the basis of severity. If you need important, immediate medical attention, the ER is still your best bet.