An emergency can occur at any time, in virtually any place, without warning. In the case of an emergency people head straight to the hospital, but should they be heading to the ER? Many don’t know there’s even a difference.

Most emergency rooms provide emergency care only. An ER is the place to go to whenever there is a need for urgent medical assistance and support. Upon arrival, patients are briefly assessed for the severity of their discomfort and are accordingly treated with respect to time.

A patient suffering circulatory collapse might be seen in just a couple of minutes after arrival but a man who has come for a simple consult for a sore throat might be kept waiting for several hours.

After being assessed, the patients are examined and treated as needed. They are taken to achieve 3 primary purposes or goals:

1. Relieve the pain and discomfort of the patient
2. Give appropriate immediate treatment and nutritional support in the form of fluids to improve the general condition of the patient
3. Ensure there are no complications and once the patient is cleared of them, improve the condition of the patient enough to either:
4. Have them discharged and sent home (for example, after stitching up a small cut or bandaging a mild sprain)
5. Have them referred to another facility, commonly a large tertiary care hospital, for admission into a ward

Difference Between Hospitals and Emergency Rooms

Many ERs operate on the principle of mainly focusing on the ‘now’.

Hospitals on the other hand are a completely different world. They don’t just focus on the ‘now’ but also on the ‘then’. They work on providing long term relief. They are much better staffed with at least one specialist in every medical field and they possess the space and resources to accommodate and treat more patients.

Hospitals function not only to treat conditions but also serve to take in patients under observation in an attempt to prevent certain complications from taking place.

SignatureCare Free-Standing Emergency Rooms are one of the few ER’s that offer the full services of a hospital. They have a team of board certified physicians and On- site imaging and labs. SignatureCare has the capacity to treat any emergency but, unlike typical emergency rooms, they have an average wait time of 10 minutes or less for any injury. They are also able to admit and tend to patients as a hospital would and because they are not a large scale hospital, patients benefit from more personalized care. SignatureCare services the Texas area with facilities in Austin, Houston (Memorial City, Montrose, Houston Heights, Bellaire, Copperfield, Mission Bend/Sugar Land and Westchase), Stafford, Midland, Odessa, Texarkana and Paris, TX.

To Check-in online or receive further information about SignatureCare Emergency Centers head to: www.ercare24.com