Top Rated Urgent Care Doctors Questions and Answers

Urgent care is able to help individuals with a wide range of medical concerns that are not life-threatening. Life-threatening illnesses or injuries require emergency care and individuals with these types of medical concerns need to go to their nearest emergency room immediately. Urgent care provides a convenient health care option as doctors are able to treat patients for any illnesses or injuries without the long wait of a doctor’s office or emergency room to get seen as patients don’t need to make an appointment. Urgent care centers operate on a walk-in first-come, first-served basis. They typically operate longer hours than a primary physician’s office or a walk-in clinic, so they provide a convenient option for individuals looking for medical care in the evening or on the weekend. If you are sick or injured and require medical attention right away, urgent care would be your best choice for care. Some clinics have on-site laboratory services as well as x-ray labs to allow for bloodwork, x-rays, and other tests to be performed and processed while you wait. This will allow the urgent care doctor to provide a thorough diagnosis and treatment to their patients while eliminating the need to go to a separate clinic for further testing. Additional testing may still be required, depending on the illness or injury, but urgent care clinics are able to treat the vast majority of cases during the initial appointment. Urgent care clinic doctors are able to diagnose and treat infections, migraines, sore throats, cold or flu symptoms, eye and ear infections, pulled or strained muscles, sprains, and fractures, cuts, bruises and burns, and other illnesses and injuries. If you are unsure if you should go to urgent care for your symptoms, you can always call to find out what they recommend.

A walk-in clinic is similar to a primary physician’s office in what they are able to diagnose and treat. A walk-in clinic is a good option if you have a minor medical concern but aren’t able to get in to see your primary physician for several days. Walk-in clinics are able to provide basic medical services at a reasonable price and can treat patients for injuries or illnesses such as pink eye, sore throat, sinus infections, skin rashes, and nausea. They operate on a first-come, first-served basis with no option for booking appointments. Urgent care clinics are similar in how they operate on a first-come, first-served basis however with more doctors on hand, as well as extended hours and additional services on-site, they are able to provide diagnosis and treatment for more complex and advanced medical concerns that are not life-threatening. Urgent care clinics are able to diagnose and treat fractures, infections, sprains, and strains, administer IVs, and treat a vast array of mild to moderately severe illnesses and injuries. Urgent care clinics are more expensive than a walk-in clinic but less expensive than a trip to the emergency room. Injuries and illnesses that are severe or life-threatening require emergency care that will require a trip to the emergency room.

Urgent care and emergency serve different medical purposes, so to define one as being better than the other would be dependent on the individual need for medical attention. Even then, one is not necessarily better, but one would be a more suitable option than the other based on the case at hand. A trip to the emergency room is fairly expensive and should be reserved for severe, life-threatening injuries. An urgent care clinic can treat most mild and moderately severe illnesses and injuries that are not life-threatening, at a lower cost to the patient. Many urgent care clinics have laboratory and x-ray services on-site so they can accurately diagnose and treat their patients on the spot. Urgent care is able to help individuals with fractures, sprains, strains, migraines, sore throats, infections, and many other ailments.

For more information about our urgent care services, Call us or visit us online to book an appointment. We serve patients from Portland OR, PDX, Happy Valley OR, Tigard OR, Milwaukie OR, Cedar Hills OR, Cedar Mill OR, Lake Oswego OR, Oak Grove OR, Vancouver WA, Aloha OR, Minnehaha WA, Gladstone OR, Tualatin OR, West Linn OR, Fairview OR, Oregon City OR.