Not necessarily true. It depends on the facility. The Urgent Care where I work is where we send our clinic patients for things like IV fluids and cardiac workups.
It’s been three years and the OP’s last post before he was banned was in March so it looks like it worked out.
My rule of thumb is that if I can transport myself and can wait until Urgent Care is open if need be, then UC it is. They can always advise me to go on to the ER if need be.
Urgent care clinics have a pretty good protocol for what they can and can’t see a patient for; the lawyers and the doctors want to make sure of that for liability reasons.
If you go in, and there’s any question, they’ll call an ambulance for you if you need it, or they’ll tell you to take it to the ER or your primary care physician if if’s something they can’t treat properly in the scope of the clinic.
So for example, if you’re bleeding very badly, they’ll call and ambulance and do their best at first aid, but they’re not going to repair arteries or anything like that. Similarly, for situations like ladyinthelake’s they’ll call the ambulance. If you show up with high blood pressure, depending on how high, they may either call an ambulance for you, or tell you to see your primary care physician. They’re probably not going to prescribe you Lisinopril and the DASH diet at an urgent care clinic.
But if you need 4 stitches on your finger, or a boil lanced, or Tamiflu, they’re perfectly suitable for that sort of thing.
