Yonder: Suicide, rhinosinusitis, urgent care centres, and favourite patients

Urgent care centres.

Although the growth of urgent care centres in the past 5 years has been phenomenal (180 urgent care centres in 1980; in excess of 3000 urgent care centres in 1985), they have been in existence since the early 1970s. Astute physicians, many of them involved in emergency medicine, saw that a significant percentage of the patient population utilizing hospital-based emergency departments consisted ...

Urgent care centres: proceed with caution.

The emergence of urgent care centres in the United States signifies an innovative response to the demands-public, private and governmental-to control the rising costs of health care. What is immediately obvious to the practitioner, however, may or may not be quite so obvious to the consumer. Simply expressed, trade-offs must be made. In the accompanying article 'Urgent Care Centres', Drs Janiak...

Access and care issues in urban urgent care clinic patients

BACKGROUND Although primary care should be the cornerstone of medical practice, inappropriate use of urgent care for non-urgent patients is a growing problem that has significant economic and healthcare consequences. The characteristics of patients who choose the urgent care setting, as well as the reasoning behind their decisions, is not well established. The purpose of this study was to deter...

Primary care: political favourite or scientific discipline?

Healthcare use among preschool children attending GP-led urgent care centres: a descriptive, observational study

OBJECTIVE Urgent care centres' (UCCs) hours were developed with the aim of reducing inappropriate emergency department (ED) attendances in England. We aimed to examine the presenting complaint and outcomes of care in 2 general practitioner (GP)-led UCCs with extended opening times. DESIGN Retrospective observational epidemiological study using routinely collected data. SETTING 2 GP-led UCCs...