Clinic, urgent care, or emergency room?
Choosing wrong costs you either hours in a waiting room or thousands of dollars. Here is the straightforward version.
Call 911 now if you have any of these
Chest pain or pressure · sudden weakness or numbness on one side · face drooping · sudden trouble speaking or understanding speech · difficulty breathing · severe bleeding that will not stop · a sudden severe headache unlike any before · seizure · loss of consciousness · thoughts of harming yourself.
Do not drive yourself. Do not wait to see if it passes.
Emergency department
For anything above, plus: serious injury, suspected broken bone with deformity, severe abdominal pain, vomiting blood, high fever with confusion or a stiff neck, a serious burn, or any symptom that frightens you and is getting worse quickly. The emergency department is expensive and slow — and it is exactly the right choice for these.
Same-day primary care
For the large middle ground, which is most illness: coughs, sore throats, sinus infections, fever without alarming features, urinary symptoms, ear pain, pink eye, rashes, skin infections, stomach upset, back and joint pain, minor injuries, migraines, a blood pressure or blood sugar reading that has gone off, or a medication side effect.
The advantage over urgent care is continuity. The provider seeing you can also become your ongoing clinician, has access to your history, and can follow up next week — rather than treating you once and sending a note into the void.
Urgent care
Reasonable when your clinic is closed and the problem cannot wait until morning. Evenings, weekends and holidays. Expect to be treated by whoever is on shift, with no knowledge of your history.
A wait for a routine appointment
Annual physicals, medication reviews, ongoing chronic condition management, form completion, referral requests, and anything that has been going on for months. These deserve an unhurried visit rather than a squeezed-in slot.
When you genuinely cannot tell
Call us during office hours and describe it. Working out whether something needs to be seen today is a normal part of the job, and nobody will make you feel foolish for asking.
This is not for emergencies
If you are having chest pain, difficulty breathing, sudden weakness or numbness, trouble speaking, severe bleeding, or any symptom that frightens you, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department. Do not use this website, and do not wait to see if it passes.