March 2008

East Bay patients who have minor injuries, cuts that may need stitches and other illnesses and health conditions that need immediate medical attention now have access to urgent care services at PAMF’s Fremont Center.

The Urgent Care Center opened in January to treat medical conditions and illnesses that require timely treatment outside of their doctor’s regular office hours, such as coughs and colds, accidents and falls, breathing difficulties, abdominal pain, nausea/vomiting, diarrhea and fever. The Center is open from 5 to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends and holidays.

Urgent care services improve access and make care more convenient for East Bay patients, explained Andy Chang, M.D., head of the new Urgent Care Center. However, he explained that urgent care can also make health care delivery a lot more efficient for everyone in the Tri-City area by decreasing emergency room (ER) overcrowding and reducing wait times for both patients with urgent conditions and patients with true emergencies.

“A visit to the ER without an actual emergency can be costly and inefficient, and may result in long waits,” said Dr. Chang. “We believe our Urgent Care Center will be a convenient way for patients to have their urgent but not life-threatening medical conditions addressed in a timely and convenient manner.”

If patients are uncertain if their condition is an emergency or not, they should not take any chances and should call 911 or head straight for the ER, cautioned Dr. Chang. For example, patients might want to go to the Urgent Care Center if they have a severe muscle ache, but if they have chest pain, they could be having a potentially life-threatening heart attack and should be seen in the ER.

When patients arrive at Fremont’s Urgent Care Center, a staff member asks them about their symptoms and a triage nurse will assess the urgency of their problems. Generally, patients are seen in the order that they arrive. However, patients with more severe conditions may need to be seen first, despite a later arrival time. For example, if someone walks in with a cut on their hand that is actively bleeding and needs suturing, they may be treated before a patient who has a runny nose or a sore shoulder, even if he or she comes in at a later time.

For more information about the Urgent Care Center in Fremont, visit the Fremont Center's Urgent Care Web site or call 510-490-1222.