Urgent Care and Medical Malpractice

Medical Malpractice Claims for Urgent Care Facilities

In recent years, the number of urgent care facilities have exploded. The business model for urgent cares is not conducive to quality patient care. Urgent care centers employ “assembly line medicine” by prioritizing high volume over patient care. Urgent care facilities generally are staffed with less qualified personnel than hospital emergency rooms the medical evaluations often are done by nurse practitioners or physician’s assistants without adequate supervision.

Medical mistakes are common at urgent care facilities and often include misdiagnosis, delays in diagnoses or failure to timely refer to patients to an emergency room or specialist.

Medical Evaluations at Urgent Care Facilities Often are Hurried and Unfocused

Doctors and other medical professionals at urgent care facilities are under enormous pressure to rush through evaluations in order to accomodate high volumes of patients. This may lead to a physician or nurse practitioner to rush a diagnosis without considering “differential diagnoses” that may represent a life-threatening condition. A rush to judgment may cause the medical practitioner to ignore or downplay patient complaints or not order appropriate tests to rule out more serious medical conditions.

Urgent Care Facilities Often Lack the Equipment Necessary to Properly DIagnose Illnesses or Injuries

An urgent care visit may be attractive to a patient as more convenient and timely than an emergency room visit, but it may come at an enormous cost: urgent care facilities often do not have the equipment to properly diagnose or treat emergency conditions. A patient often will not recognize when a medical condition requires a higher level of care, but medical professionals at urgent care facilities must promptly make that determination.

Physicians at Urgent Care Facilities May Not Recognize Urgent Medical issues That Require Emergency Room Intervention

Because doctors and nurse practitioners frequently rush through patient examinations, they do not always recognize the seriousness of a particular illness or injury. A patient may be discharged with a prescription for pain medication when referral to an emergency room was necessary. When the doctors fail to comply with the standard of care, the results can be disastrous.

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