Urgent care | Imamother

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Urgent care

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amother

Cobalt

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 1:22 pm

There is an urgent care doctor near my house. My doctor's office is not so close. My baby was crying at night so I went to the urgent care. He was just teething so I didn't need any medicine. I was talking to my neighbors and some said it is fine to use urgent care for everything and just go to the doctor for shots and some said that it is important to always go to the doctors office.

What is right?

amother

Tan

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 1:26 pm

you might want to figure out your insurance- how much you have to pay for each. I think for regular- not medicaid insurance urgent care might have a higher co-pay.
the benefit of going to your doctor is that you can make an appointment, you know who you will be getting- that you can trust them. you build a relationship with them. They know your child's medical history.,,
Urgent care is more expensive to run because you have to have a doctor off hours as well. Not saying that's your problem. just stating a fact.

pesek zman

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 1:27 pm

I only use urgent care on weekends or holidays when my pediafrixian office is closed

Urgent care is NOT a replacement for primary care. They themselves would tell you to follow up with PMD. The do NOT have the expertise of your PMD

Last edited by pesek zman on Thu, Nov 09 2017, 1:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

Kiwi13

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 1:27 pm

I think it’s generally better to go to your regular doctor because they have all your records and there’s a better continuity of care. But if it’s after hours, and especially in a case where you need help more quickly than your doctor’s office can provide, then go to urgent care. That’s what it’s for. I think what you did is fine. You took care of your baby the best way that you could, as quickly as possible, without disrupting him too much. It’s great it was no big deal, just teething. But obviously you didn’t know that before you went, so it’s always good to get things checked ASAP when you’re not sure.

I wouldn’t use urgent care for “everything,” but in this case it sounds totally fine to me.

amother

Bisque

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 1:39 pm

amother wrote:

I'm not the type to run my kids (or self) to the doctor for every sniffle and cough, so I don't necessarily go anywhere most times my kids are sick. But often when I felt they needed to be seen, I chose urgent care over their pediatricians office. Why? Honestly, they make it very hard to get an appointment even for a sick kid and then we sit stuffed into a tiny room with at least a dozen other sick kids who often seem way sicker than mine, exposing us to all kinds of new germs. Urgent care rarely has a wait and a large waiting room with hardly anyone in it.

amother

Silver

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 2:07 pm

Urgent care is great for when you are too concerned to wait till morning, or if your regular doctor can't get you in until the next day, or if it's the weekend (or too close to Shabbos to get to your regular doc). However, it's really important to have a relationship with a provider who knows your kids well and knows all their stuff. At the urgent care, it's always different doctors. For example, one of my kids used to get strep all the time. Now, a number of times, the symptoms came up at a time when going to the pediatrician was not feasible and I took him to urgent care for a strep test. Each time, it was a different doctor, and nobody is keeping track of how many times he's been treated for strep in the last 6 months. I followed up with my pediatrician each time, so he had a record of the times he treated the strep as well as the times urgent care did and he noticed that he was getting strep way too often and suggested we look into getting his tonsils out (we did indeed end up having them removed, and in the 2 years since then, he has gotten strep only twice). So it's really important to have a regular provider who knows your children well. Actually, for yourself too! Dh suffered from something for way longer than he should have because he kept pushing off finding a regular doctor and just went to urgent care every time the condition flared up.

amother

Aqua

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 2:26 pm

pesek zman wrote:

Agree with this 100%. Urgent care is for urgent care only. Not for regular sick visits. I'm a nurse in a pediatric clinic. I have seen some terrible care at urgent care places. It would be neglectful of you as a mother to not see your regular pediatrician for sick visits.

LittleDucky

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 3:55 pm

Some urgent cares are connected to a hospital or medical center where your records are combined. In those cases I would feel more comfortable going to urgent care (if after hours/it's urgent) as they have he list of allergies, medical history etc. but obviously follow up with primary if it's more than say stitches because I sliced myself in the kitchen again 🙂.
Urgent cares don't give you the same time to check your history and in cases where it isn't connected by EMR it is all up to you. Can you list the last time you had the tetanus vaccine? When you are in a minor medical crisis you don't have the brain space to remember everything. And urgent cares are there to fix that issue- not see the wider picture.
But urgent care has a high copay for me so unless I absolutely cannot go to my doc because it is the weekend, I go to my PCP.

Last edited by LittleDucky on Thu, Nov 09 2017, 6:01 pm; edited 1 time in total

Amarante

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 5:12 pm

I'm not sure why anyone would advise to go to urgent care rather than a regular doctor with whom you have relationship.

Urgent care is just that - it's for urgent care when your medical provider is unavailable.

My cousin used it for his daughter when they were visiting me in Los Angeles and she got sick. It would have been stupid for her to go to the emergency room but she needed to get medical care somehow.

If something is urgent - I.e. can't wait until your regular doctor is available, you go to urgent care unless it is life threatening and then you go to the emergency room.

I don't know about doctor availability but I would try to find another doctor if my doctor wouldn't see me or a child if someone was sick. When I call my doctor for an appointment, the receptionist always asks whether it is urgent or just a check up kind of thing which can wait for a week or so. If it's urgent, she will squeeze me in. Of course, if your child is feverish and you can be seen right away at urgent care, perhaps that's the better choice. But as others have posted, for most insurance the co-payment for urgent care is higher than a regular office visit but lower than the emergency room.

flowerpower

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 5:15 pm

Urgent care is great to send my teen for a culture at 9 pm.

amother

Natural

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 5:21 pm

Urgent Care is poorer care for more money.

amother

Orchid

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 5:54 pm

I don't know what kind of pediatricians y'all have found, but mine doesn't have a "relationship." There is the advantage of records, but I have to bring up the stuff on those or specifically ask them to look it up.

This isn't like the olden days, where you had a family doctor that remembered your name, and that your mother-in-law was also allergic to avocadoes, so you shouldn't introduce your baby to them just yet.

amother

Floralwhite

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 6:08 pm

amother wrote:

Mine is "old fashioned" and remembers us. And I mean really knows me and I know others who go as well and they get treated with the same level of personalized care and concern. They take notes on things like milestones and if I called before about a concern.
Growing up, mine wasn't this way and I couldn't wait to switch when I turned 18. But My PCP now doesn't know me at all so it's no better. I haven't brought my kids anywhere else yet but I would of course tell my kids pediatrician. I know it's rare to have this kind of pediatrician for my kids but that's because they are pressured to see more patients in less time.

Even if yours doesn't know you, they should have a record so all your info is in one place.

amother

Ginger

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 6:24 pm

Pediatricians are the better route for a few reasons:
1) They have access to your baby's medical history. For example, once my daughter was sick and needed antibiotics -they gave her penicillin. She got a rash everywhere the next day (and no, she's not allergic) - she had mono a few months before ,and apparently if you take penicillin within a few months of mono, it produces a rash over the whole body, and yo u should really take a different antibiotic. The average parent wouldn't know that, and an urgent care doctor couldn't have known that without her medical record (because if she's over mono, I wouldn't think to mention it for a different illness months later at urgent care) Her pediatrician would know about the mono and know to give a different antibiotic. And we would not have needed to go back to the doctor to get anew prescription either.
2) You know the pediatrician is good. We have seen many urgent care doctors over the years, and some were great and some were terrible.
3) Less room for mistakes, because they have your records. Once I went to an emergency doctor, he prescribed me antibiotic. I told him which antibiotic I was allergic to, but he prescribed an analog of it with a different name. Thank G-d I noticed right before I took it. It never would have happened with a regular doctor, because my allergies are at the top of my medical record.
4) Most urgent care doctors are ER specialists, not average pediatricians. My doctor (who's a GP, not even a pediatrician), said this means they are well-experienced with emergency situations, but have much less exposure to the more minor things and sometimes miss something less obvious or ignore lesser symptoms because they know they're not serious; also that an ER doctor is not going to catch developmental delays until things are more advanced, because they aren't really trained for it / experienced in it (MY GP said even GPs miss things like this when seeing young children). We have a daughter with a delay and the pediatrician caught it early at a sick visit (instead of waiting until she would be there for her next well visit) and we were able to do early intervention, and it makes such a big difference. The urgent care doctors never focus on the bigger picture, just on whatever it is you are there for, and can often miss other things, developmental or healthwise, that are going on.

Beyond that, there is a better reason why you shouldn't go to urgent care all the time:
- People who go to urgent care for actual emergencies have to wait because of you. When my baby had 105 degree fever which wouldn't come down and a very bad cough, we ran to urgent care. We had to wait 4 hours to be seen, because a whole bunch of people brought in coughing babies. But they had the coughing babies checked in order. Turned out my baby had pneumonia, and cried and cried (or tried to) for hours while we waited and couldn't sleep because of all the noise and lights in the waiting room. It was horrible. She needed immediate antibiotics and steroid treatment and sleep, but couldn't get it because some parents thought it was easier to come to urgent care, while a lot of the babies/children there could have seen a regular doctor. The secretary said it's usually not that busy, we just came on an unlucky day. But when I have an actual emergency, I don't want to have to wait because some people feel that it's easier for them to use emergency resources than a regular doctor.

So obviously if it's after hours or nights or weekends, or in an actual emergency, urgent care is a good option. But even though our pediatrician doens't have many appointments, I'd still rather call up and push for an appointment that day and they usually squeeze me in. If I had a pediatrician who never had time for sick visits, what's the point of having a good one if you never see them? I would switch to a more available pediatrician if that were the case. I'd choose an average pediatrician over an average urgent care doctor any day.

amother

Sapphire

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 6:31 pm

amother wrote:

Sick visits is precisely what urgent cares are there for. It's primarily ER trained practitioners who are trained to treat emergencies or urgent matters aka a sick visit. You should still have a pediatrician for well visits and an ongoing relationship which can include sick visits.

amother

Sapphire

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 6:36 pm

amother wrote:

The mono thing is something your pediatrician should have educated you about telling another provider just in case.
You should also know to always tell a doctor about allergies so it should be at the top of your urgent care chart too.
Primary care doctors are not infallible and my own doctor who I still trust prescribed me medications that were dangerous for me--he should have known because he was the one who diagnosed the condition that made it dangerous for me.
And a baby with a temp of 105 that won't come down should not have been at an urgent care. You should have gone to the ER. Urgent cares are for less sick patients though we do sometimes have to send patients to the ER.

amother

Aqua

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 8:07 pm

amother wrote:

Most sick visits aren't urgent. Yes, if your child has a high fever and your pediatrician is closed, an urgent care can be appropriate. But as others have said, urgent care is an ER mentality, and I have frequently see them under or overdiagnose something that your regular pediatrician would have/should have treated appropriately. In addition, like others said, an urgent care will not keep track of how often you have strep throat, etc, which your doctor will.

country

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 9:38 pm

almost every urgent care place in BP has only PA which have approx 2-3 of schooling instead of a doctor which has approx 11 years of schooling. They are only trained for very routine stuff anything more serious you want to go to a dr they are just much better trained

amother

Sapphire

Thu, Nov 09 2017, 10:11 pm

country wrote:

Yes, PAs have less schooling than doctors. Saying they are only trained in very routine stuff is simply untrue. That being said, they should always have access to a doctor for questions. And I've heard really good things about Brooklyn urgent care PAs.

amother

Ginger

Fri, Nov 10 2017, 6:21 am

amother wrote:

I agree that primary care doctors aren't infallible, all doctors are people.

And for the record, of course I told the doctor about my allergy. So he didn't give me the name I said, just an analog with a different name, but I wasn't familiar with it so I didn't know it was an analog, until I got home and looked it up just to be sure. Obviously there are urgent care doctors who are wonderful too. But you never know what you are going to get.

As for urgent care vs. ER, we don't have an ER nearby. That's why urgent care is so valuable. She didn't even need to go to the hospital in the end, because they were able to give her the care she needed at urgent care (x-rays, blood tests, additional fever reducers, antibiotics, and steroid treatment), but they could have sent us in an ambulance if needed, thank G-d we didn't. Not all towns have hospitals and urgent care is equipped for these kinds of things for that reason. Can't replace an ER, but is often a good first stop. Not all urgent care clinics are the same, it really depends where you live.

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