Emergencies? What emergencies?
Even if you have a good insurance plan, it is still can be very difficult to achieve the treatment you need. Accidents and sickness don’t always strike at the most convenient times. Because there’s a shortage of physicians prepared to work in general practice, it’s often difficult to get a same or next day appointment. Worse, getting access to your physician at night or over the weekend can be next to impossible. This leaves you with self-treatment (not always so reliable) or one of the alternatives. Starting in drugstores and now spreading, there are a new run of walk-in retail clinics staffed by nurse practitioners. These are open 24/5 and offer basic treatment for non-threatening conditions for a set fee. An increasing number of health insurance companies cover visits to these clinics for a modest copayment. Check out the wording on your policy. If your injuries or sickness are more serious, you can try one of the urgent-care centers/clinics. These are staffed by physicians but their opening times are limited to nights and weekends. They are not open 24/7! But, as with the retail clinics, more health insurance companies will cover a visit for a copayment. Why is the emergency room the last on this list? Well there are two main reasons. The first is that waiting times are growing ever longer in hospitals as more people head in there for treatment. If this is not a major emergency, you will get treatment faster in an urgent-care center. More importantly, the copayments required in a hospital tend to start at $100 and go up. Big warning: if you go to an emergency room and your health insurer does not classify your problem as an emergency, you have to pay the whole bill for treatment. So what are emergencies? If the injury is acute or the sickness serious, there is unlikely to be a problem. Of cause it is always better to feel safety, but when you want to get emergency treatment you must reckon everything very well. If you do have a chronic condition, the symptoms must have significantly worsened if this is to be an emergency. It’s almost impossible to count having a prescription refilled as an emergency. You can always learn more about health insurance features and get online quotes in the internet.
