More and more, people are choosing to have blood work and laboratory testing done at urgent care centers. Probably for the same reasons they choose urgent care for anything else:
- Urgent care is more convenient; usually in your neighborhood and open after normal business hours.
- Efficiency is higher at an urgent care, due to the handling of only a short list of urgent health situations.
- It is more affordable due, again, to the short list of emergency situations an urgent care is designed to handle.
With triage, or the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses in a medical setting, comes the long waits when a more emergent situation hits the hospital and pushes your routine blood work back a few minutes… or even hours.
Convenience
Who wants to schedule a test two weeks out with their doctor? No one, that’s who. With urgent care, you can get the lab test you need, today.
Efficiency
Nobody likes waiting in a waiting room – no matter how many magazines might be laying around. At an urgent care center, the time spent waiting for a provider is minimal. Less time spent waiting is one of the greatest perks to the rise of urgent care as a viable healthcare option, and going in for lab services and prompt blood test results is no different.
Affordability
Part of what makes urgent care great is the price. Usually, urgent care centers will be significantly less expensive than the ER. There’s a very high chance your insurance will be accepted – of course, this isn’t 100%. But even without insurance, you’re much better off paying out-of-pocket at an urgent care than at a hospital.
List of Urgent Care Lab Services
See below for a list of common lab tests and services offered by urgent care centers. Note: this is just an example of lab services – some urgent care centers do not offer every service below.
- Phlebotomy aka Blood Tests. Any number of tests to determine the health of organs and identify potential diseases. Blood tests are sometime processed in a separate laboratory and may take a few hours, or even days, to process. Oh, and they will sometimes bill separately, so prepare yourself for unexpected costs to come days after your tests elsewhere.
- Point of Care Testing. Medical testing outside the clinical laboratory for things like rapid flu, rapid mono, blood sugar, urinalysis, and urine pregnancy test. These tests are performed in the clinic and results are immediately available.
- Imaging. Chest X-rays, extremity x-rays, and EKG testing that allows us to see a visual representation of the body for analysis.
- Specialty Exam Services. Commercial driver’s license exams, pre-participation exams for youth sports, worker’s compensation injury evaluation, urgent women’s health exams and physical therapy
Verify That Home Pregnancy Test
While a home test can still have a wide margin of error, you may want to confirm the results with a medical professional at a time that is not an emergency room situation, and your OB-GYN is not open (after hours and weekends).
Urgent care clinics will verify your results, but while still providing the same level of trusting advice and care you’d expect for your local planned parenthood clinic.
What to Take Away About Urgent Care Testing
There’s a common misconception about urgent care centers having limited capabilities. But never mind that – urgent care is ideal for lab testing! Whether it’s a blood test or an X-Ray, medical testing at urgent care is convenient, efficient, and affordable.
Don’t wait in the waiting room for medical tests – walk into your local urgent care and ask if they provide the medical test you need. Odds are, they do, and for much less than you’d pay anywhere else!
Source: Go Health