Healthcare comes in numerous forms, two of the most common being primary and urgent care. While they share the same function of diagnosing and treating health conditions, the difference lies in the conditions they deal with. Knowing where to go to receive medical care is key to preventing diseases from worsening and saving on costs.
Here’s a deep dive into primary and urgent care and everything that sets them apart, from how they work to the illnesses they deal with.
Primary Care
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), primary care refers to:
“…a health system that provides promotive, protective, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative services throughout the life course.”
Primary care is more than a key part of the overall healthcare system. It’s the first line of defense against diseases, concerned with ensuring a person’s long-term health and well-being. Think of the saying, “Prevention is better than cure.” A person won’t have to spend on expensive medications or procedures if they don’t catch the disease in the first place.
A doctor who delivers primary care is known as a primary care professional (PCP). Their roles are embodied in the five kinds of services defined by the WHO.
- Promotive: Establish living conditions that promote good health
- Protective: Limit the damage caused by a person’s active illness
- Preventive: Reduce the person’s risk of contracting the disease
- Rehabilitative: Assist in restoring bodily functions affected by the illness
- Palliative: Provide relief from pain and other symptoms of the disease
As such, PCPs mainly consist of general health professionals such as pediatricians, family doctors, and primary care physicians. They also include doctors for specific patients and medical fields, such as obstetricians and gynecologists.
Patients in a primary care provider commonly suffer from but not limited to:
- Upper respiratory infection
- Hypertension/high blood pressure
- Arthritis
- Type 1 and 2 diabetes
- Anxiety or depression
- Pneumonia
- Back pain
No matter the disease and its severity, anyone seeking adequate healthcare usually goes through a primary care provider first. Because of this, it’s important for PCPs to create and maintain healthy relationships with patients. Only when a patient feels safe sharing their symptoms can a PCP provide accurate diagnosis and medical treatment.
PCPs do this in a range of ways, from showing empathy to providing convenient services like same day doctor appointment. In the latter case, allowing patients to seek medical care within 24 hours of scheduling helps deliver faster care.
Urgent Care
The American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine (AAUCM) defines urgent care as:
“…the provision of immediate medical service offering outpatient care for the treatment of acute and chronic illness and injury.”
The term may sound synonymous with emergency care, but both tackle different medical cases. Think of it as the middle ground between a primary care clinic and the emergency department (ED). It deals with illnesses and injuries that don’t pose an immediate danger to the patient’s life but can’t be treated in a primary care setting.
Urgent care is no substitute for primary care as both deal with wildly different scenarios. However, an urgent care clinic can be a viable alternative if the PCP is unavailable or an illness or injury manifests outside a primary care clinic’s hours. On that note, urgent care clinics aren’t necessarily open 24/7 like EDs.
The AAUCM adds that urgent care specializes in delivering acute treatment. While not life-threatening, any of the conditions below can become a complication if not treated within 24 hours (list is not exhaustive).
- Allergic reactions
- Conjunctivitis
- Diarrhea
- Ear infection
- Fever
- Insect bites
- Lacerations
- Migraine
- Skin rashes
- Sinus infection
- Wounds/abscess
Complications arising from conditions that a PCP usually treat also warrant urgent care. For instance, back pain can be caused by a wide range of health conditions, from sprains to kidney stone formation.
Given their nature, urgent care centers maintain more specialized practitioners along with nurses and nurse assistants. Common specializations include (but not limited to) internal medicine, sports medicine, and emergency medicine. The attending doctor will depend on the patient’s reason for an urgent care visit.
Urgent care is an indispensable part of a healthcare system. With EDs struggling with staff shortages, urgent care centers reduce their burden by handling non-life-threatening cases. Patients can also receive treatment at these facilities faster and at a lower cost than an ED.
Conclusion
To sum it up, seek primary care for a routine checkup or a plan for long-term care. If the illness or injury is sudden but doesn’t pose an immediate danger, urgent care is better equipped to deal with it. Under some circumstances, the latter can serve as a source of primary care.
