Urgent Care Medicine at Abundant Family Practice
Patients who need immediate medical service for acute and chronic illness and injury can benefit from urgent care medicine at Abundant Family Practice. Offering urgent care requires broad knowledge and close communication and collaboration with specialists.
What Is Urgent Care?
Urgent care is not a replacement for regular doctor visits. It should be used as a convenient option when you can’t wait for a scheduled appointment or illness or injury strikes outside of regular office hours. It’s also an alternative to what could be hours of waiting at a hospital emergency room.
Urgent care practitioners like Chad Speth are on the front lines of medicine, and they need to be proficient in evaluating and caring for any patient who walks into their clinic. That means there is some overlap between the scope of practice in urgent care medicine and many other medical specialties involving direct patient care.
Types of urgent care Chad Speth is experienced in treating include:
- Allergic Reactions and Asthma
- Cuts, Burns, Bug Bites and Animal Bites
- Falls, Sprains, Strains, and Broken Bones
- Colds and Flus
- Pink Eye
- Ear Infections
- Sinus Pressure and Sinus Infections
- Bronchitis and Strep Throat
- Flu Vaccinations
- Physicals (School, Sports, or Annual)
- Well baby checks
- Gynecologic exams
- Drug Screening
How Is Urgent Care Similar to Emergency Medicine?
Most parents who receive treatment in an ambulatory medicine setting can be treated fully by an urgent care medicine specialist, either independently or in consultation with another specialist. They may sometimes need a follow-up appointment or Chad Speth will refer them to another specialist, transfer them to an emergency department, or recommend direct hospitalization for inpatient care. Urgent care does not include surgical operations (other than skin lesion removal or wound repair), inpatient care, or continuing medical care for chronic medical problems.
The Overlap Between Urgent Care and Family Medicine
Urgent care medicine shares the most in common with family practice and emergency medicine, compared to other medical specialties, though it is unique enough from both to be considered a separate specialty with a distinct knowledge base, skillset, and breadth of experience required. Like family practice, urgent care has a broad scope, as it cares for patients of any age, male or female, with any complaint.
Where it differs from family practice is in its focus on acute medical problems. Not every family practice doctor offers urgent care medicine, focusing mainly on chronic health issues in patients. Family practice is about continuity of medical care more than anything.
Urgent Care or Emergency Room?
Urgent care is not the same thing as an emergency room. Patients with medical problems on the high end of the severity spectrum should go to the emergency room, but patients on the low end may get treated quicker through urgent care, with the added benefit that they may already be Chad Speth’s patients. Chad Speth has expertise in evaluating and treating urgent care patients with simple, office-based laboratory tests (including urinalysis, pregnancy test, and rapid strep assay) and X-ray. If you present to urgent care at Abundant Family Practice and Chad Speth judges that your medical problem requires more complex tests such as CT scanning and ultrasound, he may transfer you to a hospital emergency department.
One benefit of urgent care over emergency care for lower-severity acute illness or injury is that care can usually be provided more quickly than in the emergency room. However, urgent care cannot provide definitive care of critically ill patients and are not equipped for long-term patient observation.
Chad Speth Can Meet Your Urgent Care Needs
Whether you are a current patient at Abundant Family Practice or not, Chad Speth is a great, convenient urgent care provider in Logan, UT.