Compliment to Primary Care: It is always recommended that patients rely on primary care providers for any medical problems requiring continuous attention. While urgent care physicians are specially trained to treat persons of all ages, especially children, in the case of a condition requiring continued treatment, patients are always referred to a primary service provider.

Appropriateness: The Centers for Disease (CDC) has reported that approximately 40% of visits to hospital emergency departments are for non-urgent or semi-urgent problems, which are more appropriate to urgent care. In addition, the CDC notes that patient visits to hospital emergency departments currently average 3.2 hours. A more recent Press-Ganey study estimated hospital emergency department visit time at 4 hours.

Many of the problems currently treated in hospital emergency departments can receive treatment in less than one hour in an urgent care center. Most urgent care centers offer extended hours in the evening, on weekends and holidays for patients to receive treatment when their personal physician is not available. At the Dulles Urgent Care Center, our average patient visit time is less than 45 minutes.

In summary, urgent care offers timely, convenient and appropriate care to members of the public who have illnesses or injuries that are not of an acute nature. Urgent care is appropriate for injuries of a severity higher than generally seen in a primary care physician office but yet of lower severity than requiring care in a hospital emergency department. In addition, urgent care saves the patient time and money.