After a decorative plate fell off the wall and put a gash in the side of Tina Melgar’s face late last month, she went to MemorialCare’s urgent care clinic in her Los Altos neighborhood of Long Beach and was seen almost immediately.
The medical team gave her four stitches, and a week later she was back – no appointment necessary – to have them taken out.
Had the same mishap occurred a few years ago, Melgar says, she would have gone to the emergency room at Long Beach Memorial – also owned by MemorialCare – and probably waited several hours to be seen.
“They would have charged me $200, I’m sure,” Melgar says. Her co-pay for the urgent care visit will be $20, and “because I was in such misery, they didn’t ask me for any money at the time.”
Melgar is not the only one to discover that she can get good care much more quickly and cheaply at an urgent care clinic than in a hospital emergency department. Hospitals, under mounting pressure to deliver care more cost-effectively, are switching to outpatient settings and discouraging the use of their emergency rooms for conditions that are not threatening to life or limb.
Urgent care clinics are booming across the nation, as venture capitalists, large health systems and even insurance companies see growing patient volume and cost-efficient medical care driving strong returns on investment.
Read the full article at ocregister.com
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