Please Bother Me! That’s What I’m Here For
Twice in the last two weeks, I’ve talked with patients who have had urgent issues pop up after-hours. Both patients decided to head to an urgent care clinic and got good treatment, though it was expensive. One of them said “I didn’t want to bother you.”
And that made me stop and think — how do my patients know when to go to the emergency room, and when to use an urgent care center? And when should they call me instead?
Don’t Go to Urgent Care Again
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. 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.