Don’t Go to Urgent Care Again

You know, when I was a kid, there weren’t any urgent care centers. When I got sick, my mom would call our doctor and ask what to do. It didn’t matter what time it was. He was available for us, and he’d give my mom good advice. Sometimes he’d need to see me, and I swear (I might be misremembering this) we didn’t even make an appointment. We’d just show up and wait our turn, and he’d get us in when he had a moment, and give us a prescription for some penicillin (back when it actually worked).

That kind of personal relationship with your primary care doctor just doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Doctors don’t have time to answer your phone calls, and you sure can’t walk into the office and wait your turn for an appointment. You’re lucky if you can call and get an appointment less than 6 months out. 

And while that model can function for scheduled well-visits, it can’t help when you have an acute illness or injury. 

Now there are urgent cares all over

So we have urgent care centers. Lots of them. Between 2014 and 2023 the number of urgent care centers in the U.S. have nearly doubled. And the more urgent care centers we have, the more normalized it becomes to just expect to go to urgent care when you need immediate care.

Doctors at an urgent care aren’t responsible for the ongoing care of a patient with a condition like diabetes or high blood pressure. They are only accountable for the specific problem that brings the patient in the door. 

This makes for a quick, transactional encounter. And because they are compared to emergency rooms, they can bill pretty high rates compared to a typical outpatient physician. It’s common to drop $200-300 each time in co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses. 

And yes, you’ll get your antibiotics and a chest x-ray at urgent care. But you will not get a doctor who knows you, who will follow up with you the next morning and make sure you’re doing okay, and then bring you into the office a week later to make sure you’re really doing better. 

People deserve better care 

We deserve to go back to a time when you could call your doctor when you got sick or hurt, and that doctor also knew about your medical history and could treat you as a whole patient, not just “sprained ankle in room 2” or “UTI in room 5.”

DPC (Direct Primary Care) is a model that makes it possible. And yes, I actually want you to bother me, so you don’t need to go to urgent care.

If you are my patient, I will rarely tell you to go to urgent care. I want you to call me first, and we will talk about what you might need. There are so many things we can take care of with a quick phone call and a few questions. Strep throat, a sprained ankle, stomach flu, an asthma attack — these are all things I want to talk to you about, and help you through.

After all, who wants to spend a couple of hours in the middle of the night sitting at an urgent care center when you feel sick? Certainly not me. Being away from home when I don’t feel good is the last thing I want.

Of course, sometimes there are things that you just need to be seen in person for. In those cases, we can almost always wait until the next day, and I can easily get you into the office.

In order to do this, we are committed to keeping our practice small, so I can provide care as both your primary care physician and for your urgent needs. 

If you save yourself a few trips to urgent care a year, you’ve already paid for half of your Nexus DPC membership.

If you’re interested in becoming a patient or would like a 15-minute chat to meet Dr. Jay, start here or call/text us at (314) 464-9333.