Unscheduled urgent or emergency care is becoming more common. It is considered unscheduled because it is between the office visits your doctor has scheduled.
In an important report by doctors K. Kocher and B. Asplin (Annals of Internal Medicine volume 158, page 908, 2013), 30% of outpatient visits in the United States are for unscheduled care which occurs either urgent care centers, emergency rooms, at emergency visits with your own physician, or an emergency visit…
We are familiar with having to go to the emergency rooms and many of us have waited hours and hours for care. Often, even with chest pain or symptoms of a stroke (numbness, confusion, headache, weakness or dizziness), a patient just has their family or friends drive them to an emergency room.
An important article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association volume 309, page 2480, 2013 by J. Saver and colleagues…