Health Care Costs

Respiratory Illness is causing an increase in patients going to the emergency room and health experts say if you’re experiencing minor symptoms, go to primary care or urgent care instead of the E.R.

The reason, it could save you time and money.

Texas Tech Health’s Doctors use this analogy, if it costs 1-dollar at your primary care office, the same price would be closer to 4-dollars at urgent care and then 20 to 40 dollars at the emergency room.

Using this analogy there is a wide scale when it comes to care costs.,

Primary care is the best setting from a cost perspective and the urgent care setting is a good alternative if you’re uncertain or just unable to put off care and can’t get into your regular doctor’s office in a timely manner.

Health experts also note they are not discouraging you from using emergency rooms, but they say a high percentage of the care delivered in the ER does not require an emergency room as the place of care.