Urgent Care Centre’s: “Urgent Need of the Hour?”

Excerpt

Emergency departments (ED) serve as first contact for acutely ill cases; their main goal is to provide initial assessment, early intervention and appropriate stabilization. The severity of cases presenting to the ED may vary, necessitating an ED triage to help classify children based on acuity of illness and initiate timely therapy for the ones who are critically ill [1]. The main purpose of saving lives by proper and timely resuscitative care in an ED gets marred by the volume of inappropriate ED visits or referrals. Globally, the number of Emergency department visits is on the rise, and evidence suggests that a substantial proportion of these actually did not require emergency care [2]. Anywhere between 20 and 80% of ED visits have been shown to be inappropriate or unnecessary by many studies in the adult population [3, 4]. Data in children are no different; about 40% of ED attendances are believed to be inappropriate particularly among younger children [5]; it has also been estimated that 10% of infants attending ED had no medical problem [6, 7]. Furthermore 30 to 63% of visits to pediatric ED’s have been described as low acuity or non- urgent [8]. …