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1. What is an Emergency?
Emergency care is care needed right away. An emergency is a serious medical condition or symptom (including severe pain) caused by an injury or sickness, or mental illness, which arises suddenly and requires immediate care and treatment to avoid disability or death.
If a medical condition arises suddenly and you believe as a reasonable person that without immediate care and treatment your life or health is in jeopardy, you should go to the emergency room.
Some examples include:
- Signs of a heart attack that last two minutes or longer, including chest pain
- Signs of stroke, like sudden onset of numbness in any extremity
- Severe shortness of breath
- Bleeding that won't stop after 10 minutes of direct pressure
- Poisoning
- Complicated fractures
- Major injury such as head injury
- Coughing up or vomiting blood
- Suicidal or homicidal feelings
2. What treatment facilities are available when an illness or injury arises?
Emergency departments are staffed with highly skilled physicians who have specialty training in managing catastrophic illnesses or life-threatening injuries. People often think of going to the Emergency Department when an illness or injury occurs because it is perceived to be convenient and open 24 hours a day. However, patients with minor or non life-threatening illnesses often have to wait a long time for care while other more seriously injured patients are evaluated.
For many medical situations contacting your doctor's office during normal business hours, or going to an Urgent Care Center is often a better solution.
3. When should people contact their Primary Care Physician?
If it is not an emergency, most primary care physicians have after hours coverage by phone. You may speak to them or another physician or nurse to ask questions so they can determine if you need immediate care or if you can see them the next day. Many primary care physicians stay open later in the evenings and on weekends to provide access for their patients.
4. When should people go to an Urgent Care facility?
Go to your doctor's office unless it is after hours and you feel the condition can't wait until the next day. Some reasons to go to an Urgent Care facility:
- Earaches
- Minor cuts where bleeding is controlled
- Sprains
- Skin rashes
- Colds, coughs, sore throat
- Most fevers, though if there is a convulsion or extreme fever in a child, go to the ER
If you have any questions about whether it is an emergency or not, you should call your primary care physician.
5. Why are Emergency Rooms always so busy?
More than 100 million Americans go to the Emergency Room every year for symptoms ranging from a high fever to chest pain. Emergency physicians at Sparrow Hospital treated more than 100,000 patients last year alone.
People often think of going to the Emergency Room when an illness or injury occurs, because it is perceived to be convenient and open 24 hours a day. For many medical situations contacting your doctor's office during normal business hours or going to an urgent care center is often a better solution.
6. Don't people usually go to the Emergency Department when it is a true emergency?
Many do and if you believe significant harm will occur if you do not get prompt treatment, you should go to the Emergency Department.
PHP of Mid-Michigan recently did a study to review why people were going to the ER. The top five reasons were:
- Stomach pain
- Fever
- Headache
- Chest pain
- Cough
Alternatives for some of these individuals may have included contacting their doctor's office or going to an Urgent Care facility like Mason Urgent Care, Okemos Urgent Care or Michigan Ave. Urgent Care.
7. What is the resulting cost by using the Emergency Department vs. an Urgent Care?
A visit to the emergency department for a non-emergent service will often cost 3-4 times more than a visit to an urgent care center. Overuse of the emergency room is one of the top drivers to higher cost and rate increases for insurance today. But the cost is not only a financial one, keeping the physician from seeing more emergent cases means time delays for everyone.
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