With U.S. road deaths spiking 20-year highs, everyone who travels in any fashion on the country’s roads must be as savvy as possible about staying safe, including by thinking twice about where to go to receive medical checks and treatment after any seemingly minor vehicle wrecks and by forgoing bike riding while high on drugs or booze.
In recent times, patients have found urgent care centers to be a handy alternative as compared with big hospital emergency rooms for getting fast, less costly care for less complicated but still relatively serious illnesses and injuries (including for sports mishaps, cuts, and broken bones). Why not turn to such facilities after a vehicle crash, if not otherwise taken to a jammed, expensive hospital ER for major treatment? As NPR reported, such patients with lower medical demands still have been surprised that urgent care centers have turned them around and sent them to nearby ERs.
This happened to a young Georgia driver named Frankie Cook, who with her dad also then was shocked at the $17,000 cost of the ER care for scans and exam to determine if she suffered a concussion in a wreck that seemed to have left her with no visible injuries and a headache. As NPR explained: