There are, generally speaking, two types of emergency care, major and minor emergency care. Major emergency care is usually best handled by a hospital and poses immediate medical or life threatening danger, minor emergency care is less threatening and can be handled by other facilities. Asthma for example can create either type of emergency care need. While Austin, TX might be gentler on asthmatics than LA is with its infamous smog, asthma can be triggered by a lot of things. If you’re experiencing asthmatic problems they can be serious enough to threaten your health in immediate serious ways. In that case you need the emergency care to save your life. You might end up on a nebulizer and being given pure (or purer) oxygen to keep you breathing enough to survive until a better solution can be reached. However, it doesn’t have to be life threatening to be another sort of emergency.

When you need to see a doctor to get a prescription you don’t want to have to wait for weeks to get an appointment, get a physical, discuss your weight, your blood pressure and the strange freckle you’ve always had that the nurse is convinced is sign of skin cancer. You need emergency care of a different kind. You need a doctor who’s willing to take you for the first time and just focus on the immediate problem at hand and address the other general health issues later. If you need prescriptions for asthma you don’t want to wait weeks, even if it’s not life threatening asthma can lead to a very restricted life. Instead what you need is to get on a medical regimen quickly and get it handled. Once you can get up the stairs without being light headed, and can breathe comfortably you can discuss the other general health issues and have your blood work done etc.

Having a medical facility that can handle these various types of emergency care is important. The truly life threatening cases will need the resources of a hospital, but needing urgent care or minor emergency care doesn’t require the hospital. These facilities in Austin, TX usually have much quicker turnaround time on medical care and can process you more quickly than a hospital. Remember if you have a bad cut at a hospital and have been waiting for two hours, unless it’s life threatening if someone else is brought in on the ambulance for a life threatening emergency they will jump you in line. When everything is a minor case your emergency care is more likely to be quick and less frustrating. Being able to get an urgent appointment and minor emergency care from your regular doctor is a great thing for you.