A Small Sample, but Interesting Answers: ‘Emergency Room, Urgent Care, or Virtual Care?’

Educating the public on the benefits of urgent care vs the emergency room and other settings is a central challenge in the urgent care industry. This is especially true when it comes to getting through to patients who will at some point experience quintessential urgent care-worthy symptoms like cough, sore throat, and eye infection. The results of a recent poll that Cigna posted on LinkedIn, asking Where should you go for care if you are experiencing coughs, sore throats, and eye infections? (emergency room, urgent care, or virtual care), show the message is penetrating among users of the networking app. The percentage of users choosing each option may be surprising, however. While 55% said they would choose urgent care among the three, 41% chose virtual care and only 3% said they’d go to the ED for one of those symptoms. The comments may offer even more insights. While one commenter said she would go wherever “is the cheapest and fastest,” another who works for UnitedHealth wrote that virtual care “seems like the best way to start” because it’s “instant/immediate and usually free, using your health insurance.” Another who identified herself as a nurse practitioner said she would probably try to see her primary care provider first, but if she needed to see someone on a weekend she would opt for virtual care or urgent care, in that order.