Can I expect immediate treatment at Urgent Care? How long is the typical wait?
Emergency rooms must always give priority treatment to life-threatening conditions. The result is that patients whose injury or illness is less serious may need to wait a long time while emergency room staff are kept occupied with critical cases. For minor ailments, urgent care can usually provide equally effective treatment with less wait and at less expense. Some patients do arrive at urgent care with serious injuries and illnesses, and these patients are given priority. However, most patients are not seriously ill and are seen in order of arrival. Wait times vary depending on patient load. Occasionally a high volume of serious cases will extend wait times to 2 hours or more for non-critical patients, but typically patients can obtain urgent care treatment within 30 minutes to 90 minutes of their arrival. For information about conditions which are appropriate for drop-in services at an urgent care versus those which require emergency room services, please see our Urgent Care departme
