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Urgency vs. Emergency: Do You Know the Difference
When should go go to urgent care versus the emergency room? Dr. Ben Rhoades, Emergency Medicine Physician, discusses the difference between the two.
Featuring:
Ben Rhoades, DO
Benjamin Rhoades, DO, is an Emergency Medicine physician at Pullman Regional Hospital. Transcription:
Evo Terra (Host): This is the Health Podcast, the show by Pullman Regional Hospital. I’m Evo Terra. I’ll never forget the time I learned why we call a bump on the head a goose egg. My son taught me that lesson years ago when during a competitive game of hide and seek, he ran headlong into the door jam or course, leading with his head. The resulting well goose egg had this newly minted young father desperate for medical attention. Now in that situation, should I have taken him to the emergency room, or would an urgent care facility suffice? Today, I’ll talk with Dr. Ben Rhoades, an Emergency Medicine Physician at Pullman Regional Hospital so we can find out together. Dr. Rhoades, what types of illnesses should be treated at Urgent Care versus the Emergency Room? And why is that?
Ben Rhoades, DO (Guest): So, for the Emergency Room, we typically think of things like life, limb or eyesight. For Urgent Care I typically think of things that could wait a couple of days to get seen or something maybe that’s not limb or life threatening. So, if you cut yourself when you are doing dishes or cutting up a vegetable, you could probably get seen at the Urgent Care. But if you have a bone sticking out of your leg, you should probably go to the ER.
Host: That seems a pretty obvious way that many of us could get that right. Why do you think so many of us get it wrong?
Dr. Rhoades: I don’t think necessarily everyone gets it wrong, I just think sometimes it depends on the time of day people are seeking care. If you cut yourself at 2 a.m. the Urgent Care unfortunately is not open so people often will go to the Emergency Department or sometimes they just don’t know how bad their condition is. They may be worried about something that they may not actually have but they want to get evaluated and I think that’s appropriate because we can also provide some reassurance to people that they don’t have something big, bad or scary, but we want to get them seen and we want to help them out.
Host: That makes a lot of sense for injuries. I wonder more about what I would classify as a lay person as a disease. Are there certain signs and symptoms we should be looking for that clearly say that’s emergency room even though it’s not a life, limb or eyesight?
Dr. Rhoades: So, things like chest pain, head injury, severe abdominal pain, passing out, shortness of breath, bleeding that doesn’t stop after ten minutes, seizures, obvious broken bones, major burns; these are all things that probably should be seen in an Emergency department whereas things like ankle sprain, ear pain, a mild cough, nausea or vomiting. Those may be things that can be seen in an Urgent Care.
Host: For people out there, who are wondering about beyond signs and symptoms, we also worry a little bit about cost. So, can you talk about the differences in the cost between going to an Urgent Care and an Emergency Room?
Dr. Rhoades: So, the cost of an Emergency Room is higher than an Urgent Care. The big thing that differentiates that cost is the staff available. So, in an Urgent Care, we often have a midlevel provider and maybe a tech available to help you but, in the ER,, we have a full fledged staff so if someone comes in in a cardiac arrest, or having a heart attack; we can have four or five people that can attend to them and give them care that will help save their life. So, when you come to the ER for a routine care, having that staff available costs more even though we may not be treating you for a significant injury, it’s going to cost more because we have to have that staff available for those that do.
Host: Right and I think it might be partly that knowing that the staff is there, knowing that you are typically attached to a hospital I think you are going to get the best possible care there. However, as you mentioned, while that may be true, there’s a cost penalty to that and there’s also, I would imagine Doctor, the factor of possibly not letting someone else get the care that they do need in an emergent situation, not just your urgent situation.
Dr. Rhoades: Yes if nonemergent patients they can increase wait times in an Emergency Department, but we have a system called triage that helps us to see the patients that need to be seen emergently, get them back faster so that we can prioritize their care over others that may have simpler conditions.
Host: You mentioned wait times a moment ago, I know that well and I say know, as I understand it as I think about it, I think Emergency Rooms I might take a very long time to get seen where an Urgent Care might be quicker. Can you talk to some information around wait times?
Dr. Rhoades: So, here in Pullman; that’s really not the case. Our average ER wait time to see the doctor in Pullman is six minutes. But we are a small town with a community of 30,000 individuals so we really don’t have a problem with wait times either for ER visits or for Urgent Care. In bigger centers, or bigger cities, they can sometimes have hours to wait but here in Pullman, for the ER anyway, it’s a six minute wait time to see a provider.
Host: Should I worry too much about the differences in care provided. You mentioned how each are staffed but if that’s my deciding factor; should it be?
Dr. Rhoades: Sometimes people want to see a doctor. They don’t want to see a physician assistant or a midlevel provider. And a lot of times, that’s how Urgent Cares are staffed. There’s an experience difference when you are seeing a doctor versus a midlevel provider just the increased time in training. Midlevel providers don’t do a residency whereas a doctor spends three years or four years or even five years doing a residency before they are out practicing on their own. So, that experience sometimes want that opinion coming from a more of an expert.
Host: That’s Dr. Ben Rhoades, an Emergency Medicine Physician at Pullman Regional Hospital. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Health Podcast, the show by Pullman Regional Hospital. I am Evo Terra. If you found this episode helpful, please share it on your social channels. And be sure to check the entire library of past episodes. You can learn more at www.pullmanregional.org.
Evo Terra (Host): This is the Health Podcast, the show by Pullman Regional Hospital. I’m Evo Terra. I’ll never forget the time I learned why we call a bump on the head a goose egg. My son taught me that lesson years ago when during a competitive game of hide and seek, he ran headlong into the door jam or course, leading with his head. The resulting well goose egg had this newly minted young father desperate for medical attention. Now in that situation, should I have taken him to the emergency room, or would an urgent care facility suffice? Today, I’ll talk with Dr. Ben Rhoades, an Emergency Medicine Physician at Pullman Regional Hospital so we can find out together. Dr. Rhoades, what types of illnesses should be treated at Urgent Care versus the Emergency Room? And why is that?
Ben Rhoades, DO (Guest): So, for the Emergency Room, we typically think of things like life, limb or eyesight. For Urgent Care I typically think of things that could wait a couple of days to get seen or something maybe that’s not limb or life threatening. So, if you cut yourself when you are doing dishes or cutting up a vegetable, you could probably get seen at the Urgent Care. But if you have a bone sticking out of your leg, you should probably go to the ER.
Host: That seems a pretty obvious way that many of us could get that right. Why do you think so many of us get it wrong?
Dr. Rhoades: I don’t think necessarily everyone gets it wrong, I just think sometimes it depends on the time of day people are seeking care. If you cut yourself at 2 a.m. the Urgent Care unfortunately is not open so people often will go to the Emergency Department or sometimes they just don’t know how bad their condition is. They may be worried about something that they may not actually have but they want to get evaluated and I think that’s appropriate because we can also provide some reassurance to people that they don’t have something big, bad or scary, but we want to get them seen and we want to help them out.
Host: That makes a lot of sense for injuries. I wonder more about what I would classify as a lay person as a disease. Are there certain signs and symptoms we should be looking for that clearly say that’s emergency room even though it’s not a life, limb or eyesight?
Dr. Rhoades: So, things like chest pain, head injury, severe abdominal pain, passing out, shortness of breath, bleeding that doesn’t stop after ten minutes, seizures, obvious broken bones, major burns; these are all things that probably should be seen in an Emergency department whereas things like ankle sprain, ear pain, a mild cough, nausea or vomiting. Those may be things that can be seen in an Urgent Care.
Host: For people out there, who are wondering about beyond signs and symptoms, we also worry a little bit about cost. So, can you talk about the differences in the cost between going to an Urgent Care and an Emergency Room?
Dr. Rhoades: So, the cost of an Emergency Room is higher than an Urgent Care. The big thing that differentiates that cost is the staff available. So, in an Urgent Care, we often have a midlevel provider and maybe a tech available to help you but, in the ER,, we have a full fledged staff so if someone comes in in a cardiac arrest, or having a heart attack; we can have four or five people that can attend to them and give them care that will help save their life. So, when you come to the ER for a routine care, having that staff available costs more even though we may not be treating you for a significant injury, it’s going to cost more because we have to have that staff available for those that do.
Host: Right and I think it might be partly that knowing that the staff is there, knowing that you are typically attached to a hospital I think you are going to get the best possible care there. However, as you mentioned, while that may be true, there’s a cost penalty to that and there’s also, I would imagine Doctor, the factor of possibly not letting someone else get the care that they do need in an emergent situation, not just your urgent situation.
Dr. Rhoades: Yes if nonemergent patients they can increase wait times in an Emergency Department, but we have a system called triage that helps us to see the patients that need to be seen emergently, get them back faster so that we can prioritize their care over others that may have simpler conditions.
Host: You mentioned wait times a moment ago, I know that well and I say know, as I understand it as I think about it, I think Emergency Rooms I might take a very long time to get seen where an Urgent Care might be quicker. Can you talk to some information around wait times?
Dr. Rhoades: So, here in Pullman; that’s really not the case. Our average ER wait time to see the doctor in Pullman is six minutes. But we are a small town with a community of 30,000 individuals so we really don’t have a problem with wait times either for ER visits or for Urgent Care. In bigger centers, or bigger cities, they can sometimes have hours to wait but here in Pullman, for the ER anyway, it’s a six minute wait time to see a provider.
Host: Should I worry too much about the differences in care provided. You mentioned how each are staffed but if that’s my deciding factor; should it be?
Dr. Rhoades: Sometimes people want to see a doctor. They don’t want to see a physician assistant or a midlevel provider. And a lot of times, that’s how Urgent Cares are staffed. There’s an experience difference when you are seeing a doctor versus a midlevel provider just the increased time in training. Midlevel providers don’t do a residency whereas a doctor spends three years or four years or even five years doing a residency before they are out practicing on their own. So, that experience sometimes want that opinion coming from a more of an expert.
Host: That’s Dr. Ben Rhoades, an Emergency Medicine Physician at Pullman Regional Hospital. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Health Podcast, the show by Pullman Regional Hospital. I am Evo Terra. If you found this episode helpful, please share it on your social channels. And be sure to check the entire library of past episodes. You can learn more at www.pullmanregional.org.