Emergency Care for Cave Creek, Carefree and Anthem

If it might be an emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department. Our Fountain Hills emergency room is open every hour of every day, walk-in, no referral — but it is not close to all three of these places, and where it is not, somebody else’s is the right answer.

These three do not have the same answer, so here is the honest split.

For Cave Creek and Carefree, our Fountain Hills emergency room is the nearest of ours — though that does not automatically make it the nearest to you.

For Anthem, neither of ours is close. Use the nearest emergency department to you.

Fountain Hills Emergency Room — (602) 671-7990 Open 24 hours, every day of the year. Walk in — no appointment, no referral. Address, map and directions

The rule that beats all of this

Nearest open emergency department, every time.

We are not going to give you a map, because we would be guessing at distances we have not measured and at what is open tonight. 911 holds that picture — which departments are open, where they are, and what to send. Asking is the system working as designed.

How far is too far, in an emergency is the page written for this exact question, and its answer does not favour us.

Out here, lean towards 911 rather than driving

In the dense middle of the valley, driving and calling an ambulance are close to equivalent for a lot of problems. Further out they are not.

Call 911 rather than driving if:

• There is chest pain, trouble breathing, weakness on one side, difficulty speaking, or a change in how alert somebody is.
• The person might lose consciousness. Nobody drives themselves, and nobody drives a passenger who may collapse.
• You are not confident you can make the journey.
• You would be setting off alone with a child who is seriously unwell.

The assessment starts in the ambulance, treatment can begin on the way, and the receiving department is told what is arriving. What happens in the ambulance.

Be findable when you call: the address, the nearest cross streets, a landmark or mile marker, any gate code, and somebody outside to wave the crew in if you can spare them.

What our Fountain Hills emergency room is

A freestanding, full-scope emergency room to the Arizona standard — an emergency department not inside a hospital building.

On site: CT, X-ray and a full laboratory, so the imaging and blood work that answer most emergency questions happen during the visit.

A patient who needs to be admitted is transferred to a hospital — normal, and not a failure of the visit. What that involves.

Our emergency rooms treat envenomation and give antivenom, burns, lacerations and tetanus.

A clinic sits at the same address — Suite 100, (602) 671-7981 — and it is the only one in our network that takes walk-ins on an urgent care basis.

The hazards up here

Trails, and a lot of them. When to call 911 on a trail — what to say, what to do while you wait, and why moving an injured person is usually the wrong instinct.

Heat, and the medicines that change how your body handles it.

Rattlesnakes, scorpions, spiders — each with a correct response that starts with not treating it yourself.

And hypothermia, which is a genuine risk at this elevation overnight and which nobody expects in Arizona. An injured person who cannot move gets cold fast, even in mild weather.

Power cuts compound quickly — when somebody depends on equipment and carbon monoxide from whatever gets used instead.

We are not only for these places

Our service area is the east and west valley and all surrounding cities, and nobody is turned away for living somewhere else. Service area is not proximity, though, and on this page that is the distinction that matters.

Questions people actually ask

Is your emergency room the closest one to me? For Anthem, almost certainly not. For Cave Creek and Carefree, possibly, and possibly not. Use the closest one to where you actually are.

Do I need an appointment or a referral? Neither. Walk in, at any hour.

Is it open overnight and on holidays? Yes — every hour of every day of the year.

Is it a hospital? No, a freestanding emergency room. Admission means a transfer.

Should I drive past a closer emergency room to reach yours? No. Never. That is the one thing this whole section of the site exists to talk people out of.

Somebody is hurt on a trail and I cannot carry them. Do not try. Call 911, fix your position as precisely as you can, and read when to call 911 on a trail.

What about cost? Cost is not a barrier to being medically evaluated in our facilities — and the federal emergency protections apply wherever you are seen, not only with us.

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Nearest open emergency department, every time — and out here, lean towards 911 rather than driving. Our Fountain Hills emergency room is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year: (602) 671-7990. All locations →

Related reading: how far is too far, in an emergency · when to call 911 on a trail

Sources

No external source is cited. The facility facts here are confirmed facts about our own facilities, held in content/facilities.yml. The clinical pages linked from it carry their own citations.

If it might be an emergency, treat it as one and call 911.