![]() "Consumers are figuring it out, and that's important medically and financially." Only about 2 to 4 percent of people who come to an urgent care center need to be taken to an ER, Stoimenoff says. "More people are using urgent care and now know how we differ from ERs," she says. Finally, they are often conveniently located, and have shorter wait times than ERs-all of which makes them attractive options for when you need care fast but aren't having a life-threatening emergency.Īs urgent care centers and walk-in clinics become more common, consumers are getting a better understanding of when they are appropriate, says Laurel Stoimenoff, CEO of the Urgent Care Association of America in Warrenville, Ill. ![]() And even if you have to pay out of your own pocket, the cost for services is much lower in these newer options than they are in the ER. Insurers, however, typically do cover urgent care and walk-in clinics, with copays similar to what you would pay at your doctor's office. So, even when the ER is in your insurer's network, you could still get stuck with a much higher than expected emergency room bill if it turns out that the physician who treats you is out of your network. To make matters worse, about two-thirds of ER doctors are not directly employed by the hospitals where they work, and can bill separately, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians. And insurers increasingly require hefty copays for ER care. For one thing, more of them are now enrolled in high-deductible health insurance plans, which require people to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket before insurance kicks in. Anthem, which insures some 40 million Americans, has told its members in several studies, including Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio that the company reserves the right to deny coverage for ER visits that don't meet its definition of a true emergency.Ĭonsumers have their own motivations to avoid the ER. Partly for that reason, some insurers now aggressively steer people away from the ER. A 2016 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine found that, even for people with the same diagnosis, treatment costs about 10 times more in the ER (an average of about $2,200) than in an urgent care center (about $168).
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