Minor Emergency Urgent Care Clinic in Oklahoma City, OK

The most urgent medical emergencies will include any medical situation that requires immediate medical interventions to prevent loss of life. The most common life-threatening urgent medical emergencies include severe allergic reactions, strokes, and heart attacks as all of those left without severe medical interventions can lead to death or life-changing long-term health conditions. A cardiac arrest is often noted as the most urgent medical emergency due to the direct immediate risk to the patient’s life. Emergency rooms have triage systems in place to ensure that any patients who are suffering from an urgent medical emergency that requires immediate care can receive the care that they require as quickly as possible.

The biggest difference between urgent care and emergency care is the severity of medical cases that are handled by the care center. Emergency care can treat patients who require immediate medical interventions for life- or limb-threatening conditions and conditions that may require emergency surgical procedures to prevent the condition from worsening or becoming fatal. Urgent care clinics will typically not have the capabilities to provide surgical interventions and are not intended to care for individuals suffering from life-threatening conditions. The urgent care clinic is intended to be used for the treatment of health conditions that require fairly rapid intervention to prevent the condition from worsening and developing into a fatal or life-altering condition. A significant difference that patients will notice when visiting an emergency room versus an urgent care clinic will be that the emergency room will typically come with a much longer wait time (unless the health condition requires immediate attention) and will often end up costing a bit more for the visit and treatment. 

Experiencing varying degrees of pain is fairly normal, especially in those who live fairly active lives or suffer from chronic conditions, but it can sometimes be difficult to determine when pain is severe enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. The initial indicators that you should visit an emergency room for treatment of your pain is if the pain is above your threshold and is preventing you from being able to perform normal activities or is making it difficult to sleep. Additionally, you may choose to visit an emergency room for your pain if it is causing you to be bedridden or feels unbearable. This is particularly difficult to determine for those who experience chronic pain, but for others, it is also recommended that they visit the emergency room if the pain is new to them and severe, or if the levels of pain change significantly. Significant changes in pain levels can be indicative of a severe underlying condition that often requires rapid or immediate attention, so if you are unsure if your pain justifies emergency medical attention, you may choose to visit an urgent care clinic or go straight to an emergency room and both are viable options. 

If you have decided to go to urgent care, you will need to bring some form of personal identification, a driver’s license will suffice, an insurance card if you have one, a payment method, and any relevant information regarding your health condition that is requiring treatment. If the situation allows, it is often beneficial to have your experienced symptoms written down with a timeline to make the condition more easily diagnosed, as well as a list of any medications you are currently taking and any relevant information regarding your personal medical history and family medical history. If you are visiting an urgent care clinic to have medical forms filled out by your school or by an employer, you must remember to bring these forms if possible, to make it easier for the health care provider to fill out exactly what you need.

Effective treatments for minor emergencies are available at Immediate Care of Oklahoma. For more information, contact us or schedule an appointment online. We have convenient locations near you in Oklahoma City, OK. We serve patients from West Moore OK, Norman (HealthPlex) OK, Norman (24th) OK, Edmond OK, Yukon OK, I-240 & Sooner RD OK, Tecumseh OK, and Bethany OK.