Ideally, if you experience an acute but non-life-threatening injury, you will visit an emergency room or urgent care, submit your insurance information, pay a small co-pay, and bill the rest to your insurance company. However, many factors may prevent the ideal situation from happening.
Some people simply do not have insurance. Others may prefer not to utilize their insurance due to high deductibles or high co-pays. Still others may not have an insurance program that is accepted at their local hospital.
Can you visit urgent care without insurance?
Read on for a quick guide to utilizing urgent care.
Visiting Urgent Care Without Insurance
Can you visit urgent care without insurance? The answer is, unequivocally, yes. In fact, many people without insurance or those who choose not to utilize their coverage decide to use an urgent care. This is because urgent care visits are almost always significantly less expensive than emergency room visits.
A visit to an emergency room often costs well above $500 just for the facility fee. However, the moment you receive services, treatments, medications, and the like, the fees begin to rise drastically. An ER visit can cost several thousand dollars for something relatively simple. Urgent care fees, by contrast, can begin as low as $100 depending on the reason for your visit and the equipment and/or medication used.
RELATED ARTICLE: Why there are shocking costs on your emergency room bill
Will You Receive Treatment?
Urgent care centers accept patients without insurance, so you will have no trouble receiving treatment. However, if you cannot pay anything at all, they are not under any obligation to treat you, like an emergency room would be. If you are concerned about paying for your urgent care treatment, you have a few options.
- Inquire about treatment rates. Staff may not be able to calculate the exact cost of your visit before it occurs. However, you can seek treatment with a general idea of the cost you may be expecting before it begins.
- Inquire about credit acceptance. If you have a credit card or Care Credit account you’d like to use as payment, ensure your urgent care accepts your form of payment.
- Inquire about discounts for cash payments. Some urgent care centers – though certainly not all, as it is not a requirement – accept cash payments for services at a discounted rate. Although this is not a guaranteed discount, asking doesn’t hurt.
- Inquire about payment plans. If you’re unsure about your ability to pay for treatment, you may be able to utilize a payment plan and pay over time. Many urgent care centers offer fairly low rates as well.
Patients without insurance or who choose not to use their insurance due to high deductibles or co-pays are welcome in our Hyde Park urgent care clinic at any time.
We also participate with most national and local insurance providers and are happy to provide urgent care services to anyone wishing to utilize their insurance. It is the patient’s responsibility to understand whether his or her insurance has limits on the doctors he or she can see, or the services he or she can receive.
If you provide complete and accurate information about your insurance, we will submit claims to your insurance carrier and receive payments for services. Depending on your insurance coverage, you may be responsible for co-payments, co-insurance, or other deductible amounts.
For more information about insurance and billing, contact our billing department at your convenience at (773) 891-2890.
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