the Cost of Emergency Room Visits for Illness

I drove an hour away from home to take my son in to an urgent care center, rather than having to pay for an emergency room visit since we had no insurance at that time. Unfortunately, at 7 am on a Sunday morning, the urgent care center is not open, thus we still had to deal with the emergency room. After waiting almost 2 hours, we finally saw a nurse who said it was probably an abcessed tooth and that I should see my dentist the next day.

I was very displeased. We did not even get to see a doctor. I realize nurses know their stuff and some are excellent but for that amount of money, I would've liked to have at least seen a nurse practitioner! While antibiotics were prescribed for the infection, the only other things done were a check of temperature, weight and blood pressure, as well as a very quick oral examination.

If you think you're going to avoid the emergency room by visiting an urgent care center, call ahead to double check on when the care center is open. In our case, we could've either waited on it to open a few hours later or gone to the local emergency room.