Emergency room vs urgent care: How to decide where to go

Sore throat? Broken arm? How do you know where is best to turn to? Urgent care or the emergency room? There are many factors that could go into that decision. One could be crowds. Urgent care facilities tend to be less busy than emergency rooms.

“Urgent cares’ very equipped at handling most all illnesses,” said Dr. Derek Campbell with Community Care, a urgent care facility. “From coughs and colds to, you know, injuries and things like that. And we can handle them quickly. Often times, volumes will vary depending on the year and things like that.”

Another is cost. Emergency rooms take pretty much every insurance, but it can still cost thousands of dollars. Urgent cares also take most insurances. If you aren’t sure if they take yours, call ahead and find out.

“Easily stated, a broken bone, an arm or ankle, things like that, would run in the magnitude of several thousand dollars to present to an emergency room,” Campbell said. “Where as if they presented to an urgent care in the magnitude of a couple hundred dollars.”

However, it is important to follow your instincts. Don’t go to an urgent care if you think what you have is life threatening, go to an emergency room. Doctors recommend going for illnesses such as chest pain, a stroke and major trauma.

“One of the biggest reasons that we use an emergency room is so that we can get rapid information back,” Campbell said. “If something is life-threatening enough that we need to know very quickly what’s going on at any given time of the day, that’s a place that the emergency room is indicated.”

Idaho Falls currently only has one emergency room at the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, but a second one will be opening with the Idaho Falls Community Hospital at the end of this year.