What an Emergency Room Can Do That a Clinic Cannot

If this may be life-threatening, call 911. Nothing on this page is worth reading first.

This is a page about capability, not about worthiness. It does not tell you which problems deserve which door. It tells you what each building is physically able to do, so that you can tell which one can answer your question tonight.

The four real differences

Hours. Both emergency rooms are open every hour of every day and are walk-in, with no appointment and no referral. Our clinics are open Monday to Thursday and Friday mornings, by appointment. That is the difference that decides most things at 9pm, and it is the least interesting of the four.

Imaging in the building. CT and X-ray are on site at both emergency rooms, staffed around the clock. A clinic that needs a scan refers you for one, which means a second appointment on a different day at a different address.

A full laboratory in the building. This is the one people underrate. A great many urgent questions are settled by blood work rather than by a picture, and having the laboratory on site turns a two-day wait into part of a visit. The chemistry still takes what it takes — the transport and the batching are what disappear.

The ability to watch you. Our emergency rooms can hold and monitor a patient for up to 24 hours, and a critical care room at each location for the cases that need one. A clinic can examine you and send you home; it cannot observe you for six hours to see whether something declares itself.

So the practical test is: what kind of question is this?

Questions that need equipment, and need it now. Is this bone broken. Is there blood where there should not be. Is this appendix. Is this a clot. Is this heart. Those are imaging-and-blood questions, and an emergency room can usually answer them before you leave.

Questions that need time and somebody who knows you. Is this blood pressure trending the wrong way. Is this medication the problem. Is this mole changing. Why does this keep coming back every spring. A clinic answers those better than an emergency room ever will, because the answer lives in your history rather than in a scan — and an emergency department that sees you once has none of it.

And questions that are urgent and also not answerable by equipment. Those are the hardest, and they are why “call and ask” is a real option rather than a fob-off.

What a clinic does better, and it is not a consolation prize

An emergency room is very good at excluding the dangerous thing and comparatively poor at everything after that. It is built for the next hour.

A clinic is built for the next ten years, and it works mostly by somebody knowing what your numbers did last time. A single blood pressure reading is a number; three over eighteen months is a direction, and the direction is the thing that changes what anybody should do. No emergency department has that, and none can develop it in one visit.

Which is why a good emergency visit often ends with a clinic appointment, and why an emergency room telling you that is doing its job rather than passing you off.

What this page is deliberately not

It is not a list of problems that do not need an emergency room. No such list appears on this site, and there is a reason: nobody can rank their own symptoms from the inside. An emergency is whatever it feels like to the person having it. A blocked nose is nothing at lunchtime and something else entirely when you wake at three in the morning unable to breathe through it and frightened.

If you are unsure, come in — this page is not exhaustive and you are not expected to diagnose yourself. Being assessed and sent home reassured is a good outcome. The two ways of being wrong are not the same size.

Questions people actually ask

Can a clinic order the same tests? Often yes, and the difference is when you get the answer. A clinic orders and refers; an emergency room usually has it in the building.

If I go to the emergency room, will I still need to see my own doctor? Frequently, and that is normal rather than a failure. We handle the urgent question; the ongoing one belongs where your history is.

Is the emergency room better? It is better at emergencies. For nearly everything about staying well, a clinic is better, and it is not close.

Can I be seen at a clinic today? Call and ask. Appointments are by phone or a portal request — there is no online self-scheduler.

It is 9pm and the clinic is closed. Then the emergency room is the door that is open, and nobody will ask why you did not come during office hours.

Both of our emergency rooms are open 24 hours a day, every day of the year — walk in, no appointment and no referral. Our clinics are open Monday to Thursday and Friday mornings. Which door do you need? →

Related reading: primary care across our network · what our emergency rooms can do