Emergency Room – Urgent Medical Care in NYC

Hospital administrators were asked this question by the Schumacher Group. In the survey, one in six hospital administrators admitted they wouldn’t use their own hospital’s ER should they be injured! That speaks volumes about emergency room overcrowding, poor service, and high costs!

No. It’s quite the opposite. According to the CDC, patients spend 3 hours or more in an emergency room. In fact, the waiting time for non-critical visits has skyrocketed by 33%! In NY especially this problem is further aggravated by a 20%+ increase in ER visits and the closure or merger of a large number of local hospitals.

At Statcare, you will get the same or better service than the local hospital emergency room with ONE BIG EXCEPTION: You won’t have to wait!

Yes. You got it! We see everyone regardless of age.

At Statcare, your co-pay would be less than half of that at any emergency room. In fact, your final cost of care would be a fraction of the bill you would get from an emergency room “fast-track” or hospital-based urgent care! It’s no small wonder that consumers and insurers love and recommend us!

We know how it feels to be unwell or have an injury at an odd time. We feel your frustration about not being able to get medical care on demand – when you need it, where you need it. That’s the reason we opened Statcare! You deserve better service! Come and experience it at Statcare. It will be our pleasure to be of service to you.

In order to change the “feel” of the poor emergency room experience, many emergency rooms have opened up “fast tracks” or “urgent care tracks” where they quickly triage you (marketing gimmick). They may be quicker in triaging you BUT they offer no cost savings over the traditional ER visit. Nothing changes: these fast tracks work the same way an ER does.

Humana, a major health insurance company has on their website:

“Don’t Let the Urgent Care Sign Fool You! All urgent care centers are not created equal, and the difference can affect your wallet. To reduce your costs, choose a free-standing urgent care center, one that isn’t located in a hospital. These facilities are well-equipped to provide medical care for minor illnesses or injuries. The only difference is the location. Your co-payment and other costs could be a lot higher if you choose an urgent care center in a hospital.”

Urgent care medicine is an offshoot of emergency medicine except that the care gets provided NOT in the emergency room but in the community itself. At Statcare, our emergency care professionals bring the same expertise of an ER to deliver high quality care to you, right here in your own neighborhood!

That’s right – the same expertise AND much better service!

Why go to an ER when you can get better service near your home? Not only will your insurance cover it, even your personal co-pay and deductible costs will be lower! It’s a win-win situation!

Statcare makes medical care accessible, affordable, timely, and convenient. So, unless you are having a life-threatening emergency, you do not need to rush to a local area hospital’s emergency room only to sit there and languish for hours in the waiting room. To these emergency rooms, you would be just another assignment waiting to be triaged and seen.

Well, don’t take our word for it. Ask you insurer or the hospital finance department. Or just check that hefty “ER Bill of Services” you got the last time you were in the ER!

Even though they call it “fast track” or some other label, the truth is that they are using the same billing systems and the same level of ER billing. The average ER bill in Long Island is close to $1200!

Still not convinced? Just check what your expected co-pay was for that last “fast track” visit – you must have easily paid $50-$75 in co-pay which is actually the co-pay for an ER visit under your insurance plan!

And beware if you have ANY deductible or don’t have any insurance to cover that $1000 ER bill.

It’s true that traditional emergency rooms overcharge their patients. You see, you may have health insurance, but not everyone does. And those hospitals are mandated to see everyone regardless of the ability to pay. Nationally, half of all ER services delivered by a hospital go uncompensated, according to Medicare. So, who makes up the difference? You do!

Now you understand why the average ER bill in Long Island is way over the $850 average! Long Island hospitals get to cover their costs for charity care and bad debt by inflating the charges for their patients who pay or who have insurance.

Hospital executives and payers call it “cost shifting.” It is an accepted practice. When you go to a Long Island hospital emergency room, you ARE going to pay more (directly or indirectly through your insurance company) to help that hospital cover its costs. It’s just the way it is.

And this brings us to the other big difference. Statcare doesn’t do any of this cost shifting. When you come to Statcare, you are paying for yourself. There is no cost shifting. Your bills are a fifth of an emergency room bill! So, be smart. Don’t be fooled by the relatively quick ER triage into a “fast-track” area. Any “fast track” option will actually end up being 4 to 5 times the cost of an urgent care visit with us!

Even your employer and your insurance company would rather you NOT use an ER for a non-life-threatening emergency. Humana, a major insurer, clearly warns its enrollees not to be suckered in by these high-cost, hospital-based gimmicks!

No wonder Statcare is a preferred urgent care center on many insurance plans. All urgent care centers are not created equal, so you need to be aware of the ones in NY that are labeling themselves as a “walk-in” or an “urgent care” center.

At Statcare, we offer safe and high quality medical care for non-life-threatening injury or illness. We use a simple fee-for-service system that ends up being one-fifth the cost of an emergency room visit, so even if you are paying for the service, you would pay far less and at the same time get a much higher level of personalized attention than you would receive if you were the 15th assignment in an ER waiting to be triaged.

If you go to the ER with a minor injury, you would not be on anyone’s priority list to be seen right away. You would be forced to wait for hours in discomfort while overworked hospital staff focuses their attention on the sickest patients: car accidents, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks.

When a sudden illness or injury occurs at an inconvenient time, you want excellent medical care — fast. As always, in the case of a life-threatening or a critical emergency situation, call 911. For all other situations in which the illness is either minor or not life-threatening, knowing where to go can be quite confusing. Use the following guidelines to help you decide.

Come to Statcare if you are suffering from:

• Flu
• Colds and cough
• Sore throat
• Strep throat
• Bronchitis / chest cold
• Fevers
• A child’s fever
• Sinus or respiratory infections
• Diarrhea
• Nausea and vomiting
• Food poisoning
• Stomach flu
• Dehydration
• Sprains and strains
• Minor fractures or broken bones
• Dislocations
• Minor burns
• Wounds and small cuts
• Animal bites
• Insect sting allergies
• Active bleeding
• Anxiety attacks
• Panic attacks
• Asthma attacks
• Breathing problems
• Dizziness
• Headaches
• Migraine
• Earache or ear infections
• Tooth pain
• Eye infection
• Non-traumatic eye injury or pain such as pink eye
• Back pain
• Abdominal pain
• Acne/pimples
• Skin growths
• Skin infection or redness/rash on the skin
• All infections
• Rashes
• Itching anywhere over the body
• Hemorrhoids
• Urinary tract infections (UTI)
• Vaginal / yeast infections

Come to Statcare if you need:

• Referrals to specialists
• Refills of prescriptions
• X-rays for minor injuries
• Stitches or removal of stitches
• Blood tests
• Asthma or COPD treatments
• Nebulizer therapy
• Oxygen
• EKG
• Dressing a wound or changing the dressings
• Cleaning of a wound or an injury
• Drainage of pus from abscess
• Removal of a lesion
• Physicals for sports, camps, schools
• Immigration physicals
• Immunizations / vaccinations
• Oral contraceptives
• Pregnancy tests
• Confidential STD tests for syphilis, gonorrhea, etc.
• Confidential HIV/AIDS tests
• PPD testing
• Suboxone therapy

Visit the emergency room in case of:

• Crushing chest pain
• Stroke (weakness in a limb, difficulty speaking or swallowing)
• Overdose with alcohol, drugs, medications
• Severe and sudden shortness of breath
• Heart palpitations
• Seizure
• Head injury with loss of consciousness
• Severe allergic reaction with inability to breathe
• Trauma or penetrating injury
• Severe injuries

Some of the nearby ERs are:

• North Shore / Long Island Jewish (LIJ) – Plainview
• Nassau University Medical Center
• St. Francis Hospital
• Winthrop University Hospital Medical Center