Four Mistakes To Avoid When Making A Trip To Urgent Care
Health & Medical
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Before heading out the door to go to urgent care, it's important that you are well prepared for the visit. After all, you will want the urgent care that you need without any delays. Here are four mistakes that you need to avoid:
- Not Knowing How Your Insurance Works: First off, you need to know how your insurance is going to cover the costs of going to urgent care. For example, some insurance plans will have high co-pays for urgent care visits. You should check the difference between the co-pay for emergency room care and urgent care if you need care right away. Most of the time, urgent care will be more affordable, but it's much better to double check.
- Not Checking the Location of Urgent Care: It's better to avoid an urgent care facility that is located next to a hospital since these will usually bill you as an ER visit rather than an urgent care visit. If you aren't sure, be sure to call and ask over the phone what they bill as. If they say they bill as urgent care, be sure to write down the name of the employee who told you so just in case you are billed for an ER visit.
- Not Calling Your Doctor for a Prescription: Rather than go to urgent care if you simply need a prescription filled, you might be able to call your doctor directly if they have an after-hours line for you. This way, you get your prescription filled right away rather than having to go to an urgent care facility and possibly wait a long time before you are seen. You can even describe your symptoms and if it's something like a UTI, your doctor will know and fill a prescription for it. Of course, this is only the case if you have an established doctor who knows your health history. A new doctor might not be so comfortable doing this.
- Not Transferring a Prescription When Needed: Another way to avoid going to urgent care when you need a prescription filled is to have it transferred to a pharmacy near you if you happen to be traveling or have recently moved. This is a simply fix any pharmacy can do for you. Of course, if you need a prescription that you don't currently have on file, then you will need to go to an urgent care facility to get one filled for your symptoms.
Avoiding these four mistakes can save you a whole lot of time and make your experience that much better.
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19 November 2017
