Primary or urgent care: the differences

When it comes to primary and urgent care, there are many differences between the two. Primary care is basically the day-to-day healthcare provided by your doctor. Urgent care is the type of medical care someone seeks when they have an illness or injury that is not serious enough to warrant going to the emergency room, they do not have a primary care doctor, or it is after hours when your primary care physician is open. .

Primary care

• Primary care generally refers to a doctor’s office and they have set hours and do not work on weekends.

• Most doctor’s offices have scheduled appointments and if a person needs to be seen they may have to wait until an open appointment is available or they are squeezed into an already busy schedule and have a long wait until they can be catered.

• Generally, a doctor’s office has an established payment schedule for visits, procedures performed, etc. and that’s what they charge the insurance company.

• With many insurance plans, there is a copayment that the patient must pay upon leaving the office and this is generally a fixed copayment.

• Primary care physicians are not just general family care physicians, but may also include specialist physicians such as dermatologists, gynecologists, and neurologists.

• Here’s an appointment, so when you arrive, they will usually call you when it’s time for your appointment.

Urgent Care

• One of the biggest differences between the two is that urgent care runs later hours and is often open on weekends. They are generally not open 24 hours a day.

• If a person becomes ill or injured, their primary care physician usually cannot see them that day or otherwise tells them to come, but they will have to wait to be seen. With urgent care, you can come in and be seen right away without an appointment. Unless the facility is very busy, the wait time to be seen is not that long.

• The main drawback of this type of medical center is that they will usually charge more for their services.

• Even if the patient has insurance, the copayment they must pay may be double what they normally pay because the center offers a specialized service.

• In urgent care centers, the doctors who work there are considered general family doctors and do not specialize in any particular area. They only deal with basic illnesses and injuries.

• Although you can come in and be seen, you may have to wait a bit as people are served on a first-come, first-served basis. They can also take the most serious injuries and illnesses first.