If you need medical attention, but your primary care physician’s office is closed, should you go to the emergency room? No, you’d be much wiser to one of the urgent care locations around your area. Here’s why.

Urgent Care Is Faster. – Here’s the thing. It’s that ER doctors are lazy or anything. No one is saying that. They’re some of the hardest working, most compassionate individuals you’ll ever meet. However, their job forces them to be pragmatic about whom they see, and when they see them. Because people go to the emergency room to in life-or-death situations, they take their patients based on the severity of the injury or illness. For example, someone who’s been shot is going to get to go ahead to someone who has a bad flu. That’s just the way it is.

No patient at an urgent care clinic is in a life or death situation (or at least they shouldn’t be). Those medical situations are what emergency rooms are for. Urgent care clinics are there for when you can’t get an appointment with your doctor, and want to get treated quickly.

Urgent Care Is Cheaper. – Another thing to keep in mind is that urgent care clinics are far, far cheaper than emergency rooms. For example if you went to the ER to get a case of strep throat, an upper respiratory infection, or a urinary tract infection treated, you would be charged about $531, $486, and $665 respectively.

Now, if you went to an urgent care clinic for the same exact treatment, you would be charged about $111 to have your strep throat treated, $111 to have your upper respiratory infection treated, and $110 to have your urinary tract infection taken care of.

Unless it’s a life or death medical issue, you’d be wise to go to urgent care. It’s faster, and it’s more affordable. If you have any questions, feel free to share in the comments.