OPINION: Urgent care centers: what is their place?
One of the charges against the various plans for Long Island College Hospital (LICH) by supporters of the hospital is that they would be just a “glorified urgent care center.” Even the planned standalone emergency rooms, which I wrote about last week, are often derided as being more similar to urgent care centers than to “true” emergency department.
I’ve been to an urgent care center, and there is an important place for these centers, although they’re not a substitute for a hospital, or even for a full-fledged emergency room.
Within a block from where I live, there is combination clinic and urgent care center that is affiliated with a major hospital. It was once open 24 hours a day; now, it’s open 12 hours a day, but it’s still open Saturdays and Sundays as well as weekdays.
My wife sees her regular primary-care doctor there, but also has used the place as an urgent care center on occasion. She’s gone there for stomach problems, for a bladder infection and when she misplaced one of her prescriptions and needed a new one as soon as possible. She also went there when she had a cut and needed stitches. In each case, the doctor (in one case, a physician’s assistant) helped her. Since the most recent occasion was around 7:30 at night, the urgent care center filled a vital niche that a “regular” doctor’s office was unable to do.