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Comment by exhilaration | Hacker News Reader

Urgent Care facilities and walk-in clinics can fill the need for immediate, after-hours care at a far lower cost than the ER. Here's a screenshot from my health insurance provider, you can see it gives options along with a comparison of their cost: https://imgur.com/a/4Lqb7

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Most urgent care facilities around me are only open till 8 or 9 - good enough for things that happened while you were at work but couldn't get to your GP for but the world doesn't stop after that. The few times I've been to urgent care they are so understaffed that if there are 3 people in line at 6:30 you'll be lucky to get seen by closing time.

There is a major lack of information and advertising around Urgent Care. Very very few people know Urgent care exists. And in what form does it exist. Its different across states and cities.

Comparatively, Emergency care/Ambulances are available almost everywhere through 911 AND take most of the mind space around urgent issues.

Finally, Urgent Care centers are not equipped to handle lots of things like broken bones etc. They just refer you to an emergency center instead.

> There is a major lack of information and advertising around Urgent Care.

Maybe we should just put the Urgent Care facility in the same building as the ER and then route people appropriately when they show up.

I've run into this first hand. I needed an X-ray but only 1 of the 3 Urgent Care centers had the machine. I went back the next day to that UCC and the X-ray technician was out.

Except that urgent care and walk-in clinics are not required by law to treat everyone regardless of cost.

That's the missing equation - that for the uninsured, the only remaining medical option is the ER.

I'd disagree that showing a few dollar symbols a real cost comparison

Make sure that it really is an Urgent Care - there are starting to pop-up businesses which are (or at least promote themselves as) Emergency Room alternatives. They charge like an ER too, so you could end up with a large bill.

Good point, but I think that depends on whether your state allows them. I've seen standalone emergency rooms in Texas but not in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. One of my relatives in Houston is an ER doc and works at one of these standalone ER's, when I asked him why these exist (in contrast to urgent facilities) he told me it was purely because they can charge significantly higher ER rates.

And Urgent Care will often just send the patient to the ER with the same company, because it makes them more money.

My girlfriend went to an Urgent Care with a stomach bug. They asked if she had any abdominal pain, and she said yes. That was a flag for them to say "We can't handle you because abdominal pain is a flag for possible appendicitus so you have to go to the Emergency Room now."

There was no way she had appendicitus. She just needed an antibiotic. But you follow the hospital's advice, and stepped into the ER and suddenly was charged $5,000 for useless tests and had to stay there for 6 hours.

I know a nurse in an urgent care in Southern California. She says, never, ever, ever, go to an urgent care. Apparently her bosses (MDs and owners of the urgent care) told her to youtube how to do stitches when a patient came in that she wasn't comfortable treating on her own. Youtube. Stitches.

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