When looking at primary and urgent care, there are many differences between the two. Primary care is basically the day-to-day medical care provided by your doctor. Urgent care is the type of medical care someone seeks when they have an illness or injury that is not serious enough to warrant going to the emergency room, does not have a primary care physician, or is after hours. your primary care physician. .
primary care
• Primary care generally refers to a doctor’s office and they have set hours and do not work on weekends.
• Most doctor’s offices have fixed appointments and if a person needs to be seen, they may have to wait until an open appointment is available or they may be squeezed into an already busy schedule and have a long wait until they can be seen.
• Generally, a doctor’s office has a set payment schedule for visits, procedures performed, etc. and that is what they charge the insurance company.
• With many insurance plans there is a copayment that the patient must pay when leaving the office and this is usually a fixed copayment
• Primary care physicians are not just general family practitioners, but may also include specialist physicians such as dermatologists, gynecologists, and neurologists.
• You have an appointment here, so when you arrive, you will usually be called when it is your appointment time.
urgent Care
• One of the biggest differences between the two is that urgent care has later hours and is often open on weekends. They are generally not open twenty-four hours a day.
• If someone gets sick or injured, your primary care doctor usually cannot see you that day or tells you to come in but you will have to wait to be seen. With urgent care, you can walk in and be seen right away without an appointment. Unless the facility is extremely busy, the wait time to be served is not that long.
• The main drawback of this type of medical facility is that they generally charge more for their services.
• Even if the patient has insurance, the copay they have to pay may be double what they normally pay because the center offers a specialized service.
• In emergency medical establishments, the doctors who work there are considered family general practitioners and do not specialize in any particular area. They only deal with basic illnesses and injuries.
• Although you can walk in and be seen, you may have to wait a while because people are served on a first-come, first-served basis. They may also take the most serious injuries and illnesses first.