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Curious to hear SDNers' thoughts on the concept of urgent care in a veterinary context.
For some background...we've been experiencing extremely long wait times in the ERs around where I live, and not all of the cases who come in are true emergencies -- a portion of them (although tbh I'm not sure how many exactly) would fall within a category of "urgent but not critical" if we were talking human medicine. It's also sometimes tough to get an appointment at a GP around here, especially as a new patient.
I poked around on VIN for related discussions, and it seems like most people strongly dislike a walk-in model vs scheduled appointments. But... it also looks as though the majority of the doctors expressing dislike on those threads also worked at clinics that saw walk-ins on top of scheduled appointments -- instead of being a dedicated urgent care-type facility. (Or they were doing surgery/other time-consuming treatments that I'd consider beyond the scope of urgent care).
A few people also said these places are not profitable and are a nightmare to staff...but I guess I am wondering if that is true across the board, was true 10 years ago but not anymore, etc.
For more background... I started wondering about this because I am personally a big fan of convenience-driven models like ZocDoc for my own health stuff, and being a busy vet student with a highly irregular schedule means there are some times when I cannot schedule an appointment way in advance (or it's just a lot more convenient to go get a flu shot at Walgreens on the fly, for example). So, just kinda wondering why this doesn't really exist in our field.
Thoughts? Opinions?
...Obviously not an urgent question
For some background...we've been experiencing extremely long wait times in the ERs around where I live, and not all of the cases who come in are true emergencies -- a portion of them (although tbh I'm not sure how many exactly) would fall within a category of "urgent but not critical" if we were talking human medicine. It's also sometimes tough to get an appointment at a GP around here, especially as a new patient.
I poked around on VIN for related discussions, and it seems like most people strongly dislike a walk-in model vs scheduled appointments. But... it also looks as though the majority of the doctors expressing dislike on those threads also worked at clinics that saw walk-ins on top of scheduled appointments -- instead of being a dedicated urgent care-type facility. (Or they were doing surgery/other time-consuming treatments that I'd consider beyond the scope of urgent care).
A few people also said these places are not profitable and are a nightmare to staff...but I guess I am wondering if that is true across the board, was true 10 years ago but not anymore, etc.
For more background... I started wondering about this because I am personally a big fan of convenience-driven models like ZocDoc for my own health stuff, and being a busy vet student with a highly irregular schedule means there are some times when I cannot schedule an appointment way in advance (or it's just a lot more convenient to go get a flu shot at Walgreens on the fly, for example). So, just kinda wondering why this doesn't really exist in our field.
Thoughts? Opinions?
...Obviously not an urgent question