Patients continue to use emergency rooms for conditions that could be treated in an urgent care setting, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s National Health Statistics Reports.
According to the CDC, of the 116.8 million visits covered by the 2007 Emergency Department Summary:
- Only 16.4 percent were admitted to a hospital or kept for observation, while 62 percent were referred to their primary care provider or a specialist for follow-up.
- Another 35 percent of patients were referred back to the ED “as needed,” presumably because those patients did not have a regular doctor.
- More than one-third of the patients categorized their pain levels as “none” or “mild." As they were in the 2006 data, the chief complaints were upper respiratory issues, otitis media (earache), abdominal pain, wounds and obstetrics complications.
- While in the ED, 45.5 percent of the patients had a procedure, the majority of which were common procedures such as administration of IV fluids, splinting or wrapping, repair of a laceration or a nebulizer treatment.
Urgent care centers are designed to treat many of these issues and others that don’t require an inpatient stay and are not life- or limb-threatening emergencies at a lower cost and usually with a much shorter wait time than the ED.
The CDC report shows that urgent care centers perform all of those common procedures and are set up to provide referrals back to primary care or specialists. The centers are also open for extended hours, as well as on weekends, providing easy access.
CDC officials say that while there will continue to be uncertainty about what conditions belong in the ED – and patients should always err on the side of caution – its latest data shows that many ED patients likely could have been treated in an urgent care center.