The Advantages of a Walk in Clinic for Medical Care

There are a lot of way to end up in the emergency room of the hospital that are not life or death events, including food allergies, asthma attacks, severe sun burns, reactions to insect stings, reactions to medication or even minor skate board or bicycling accidents. These events can all trigger the need for immediate medical care but certainly don’t qualify for an ambulance ride or immediate attention in the emergency room triage system.

The result of the ER triage system is patients who do need immediate medical care for life or death events get it and are seen first, regardless of how long other patients have been there waiting or how sick and miserable they may feel. This system works great for people who truly could die without medical intervention, but for the majority of hospital patients who are not in life or death situations, waiting for care, the system is less than ideal.

The solution to this problem has become the walk in clinic which fills a niche in medical care by providing almost immediate attention for people who need help but aren’t in a medical life or death event, without the long wait and without the high price tag that comes with a hospital visit.
And hospitals are expensive; if you look at it closely you can see why.

Most hospitals are required by law to see anyone who walks in the door needing help. A lot of those people can’t afford to pay and have no insurance to help alleviate the cost of medical care. What this ultimately means is patients who can afford to pay or have medical insurance are carrying the financial load for everyone by paying inflated cost mark ups like the twenty dollar aspirin for example.

A walk in clinic on the other hand generally works on a pay scale basis in which the patient’s fee is accessed based on their income and number of dependents. Patients who can afford to pay more do so and patients who cannot afford to pay much are able to get good medical care at a price they can realistically afford to pay.Before the walk in clinic evolved the only other options available for medical care included private doctors or the emergency room and both of these options are expensive choices unless you have medical insurance.

A walk in clinic provides a good choice alternative for people who are uninsured or are working class living paycheck to paycheck where there isn’t a lot of money to budget for medical care. A walk in clinic can generally treat patients who are not having a life or death medical event but need medical attention. Broken bones, severe burns and head injuries are examples of the type of injuries that should go to the emergency room because they require the specialty care and equipment that cannot be provided by a non-emergency facility such as a clinic.