Freestanding EDs vs. Urgent Care Centers | What is the difference?
As freestanding EDs, also known as emergency care centers, continue to pop-up on what seems like every street corner in Texas, it is becoming harder and harder for consumers to tell the difference between them and urgent care centers.
The confusion usually stems from these facilities looking quite alike and usually being located in the same types of areas -- in strip malls and in residential areas. Many wonder, "What separates these seemingly identical types of facilities?"
- Licensure
The primary difference is that a freestanding ED is licensed and regulated by the state of Texas. Urgent care centers are not. They are physician's offices with extended hours and there is no licensure. - Certification
Freestanding EDs have to have a board-certified emergency physician on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and urgent care centers do not. Many urgent cares are staffed by family practice or internal medicine trained physicans. - Equipment
Free-standing EDs are required to have much more heavy-duty medical equipment on site, and have to be able to handle much more serious injuries than urgent care centers, including everything from gunshot wounds to stabbing victims, heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents.
How can a consumer tell if they are walking into an urgent care or a freestanding ED? It's simple.
If they see the word "emergency" anywhere on the building, it's a freestanding ED. Urgent cares are forbidden by law from using the word "emergency" in any of their signage.
Knowing this one simple fact can save consumers hundreds of dollars when they have less serious health issues, including pneumonia or bronchitis, or a routine broken bone not sticking out of the skin. These situations can be handled by an urgent care very easily and quickly.
However, consumers experiencing crushing chest pain, neurological problems, are having a stroke or have suffered severe trauma like a stab wound, gunshot or punctured eyes, would need to go to a hospital emergency department or freestanding ED.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Quality Emergency Services (QES), a 100% physician-owned emergency medicine group that operates three emergency care centers in the greater Houston area.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Cypress Emergency Associates (CEA), an independent, physician-owned emergency medicine group that operates three emergency care centers in Northwest Houston.
