Should You Go to the ER or Urgent Care After a Car Accident?

After you have been injured in a car accident, you must make choices about how you will get medical care. The one certainty is that you need to get checked out by a doctor. Your health depends on it. While you may also be dealing with many other details at the time after an accident, you must invest the time that it takes to get your injuries diagnosed and treated.

Where Should You Get Treatment for Car Accident Injuries?

You have a choice to make regarding the best way to get immediate medical care after your car accident. Time is an issue for you, but you also want to ensure that the doctor treating you has access to all the necessary testing equipment.

Your main choice after a car accident is often when to go to the emergency room or urgent care. There are pros and cons to both.

Another initial step that you need to take after a car accident is to get assistance from an experienced attorney to help you fight for all the financial compensation that you legally deserve. Contact our team at JustCallMoe to speak to an auto accident lawyer in Orlando who will stand up for you.

Delayed Symptoms After a Car Accidents Can Be Very Dangerous

You need timely medical care, even if you were not taken to the hospital directly from the scene of the accident. You may still be suffering from car accident injuries that would benefit from prompt evaluation and intervention. These injuries could grow worse if they are left untreated.

Even delaying treatment for a few days can make a difference in your long-term prognosis.

The following car accident injuries may be lurking beneath the surface and need immediate medical attention:

• Internal injuries
• Whiplash
• Soft tissue injuries
• Concussions and brain injuries
• Degenerative back injuries

There are some injuries that may be suitable for urgent care, and they may not require a trip to the hospital. The urgent care doctor will still usually recommend that you follow up with a specialist.

Urgent Care Can Treat Some Car Accident Injuries

Some of the injuries from a crash that urgent care can treat are:

• Sprains
• Lacerations
• Fractures

Urgent care could often see you sooner than a hospital. There are reliable urgent care centers spread throughout the Orlando metro these days, and they are very convenient. You could have little to no wait and get a quicker diagnosis. Then, the urgent care center could even be your doctor for follow-up treatment.

You May Still Need to Go to the Hospital

However, while urgent care may be able to diagnose immediate problems, their response is often that you need to go to the hospital for further treatment. The doctors at urgent care would see enough to know that you need more medical care.

Urgent care does not have the equipment necessary to do more sophisticated testing, such as MRI and CT scan machines. This equipment is usually found at a hospital. Then, you would have ended up spending several hours at urgent care when you would have needed to go to the hospital anyway.

On the other hand, you could face a very long wait to get care at a hospital. If you walk into the emergency room on your own two feet, you may end up spending hours in the waiting room, even before you get taken back to the emergency room. Receiving emergency room care for a serious crash can take an entire day before you are released.

Hospitals Can Offer All Types of Treatment

However, there are also benefits from close proximity to everything that a hospital can offer you.

Urgent care can never really give you a conclusive clean bill of health. They may tell you to see a specialist or to go for further testing.

While there is no guarantee that everything can be diagnosed more quickly in an emergency room, there is a much better chance that you will have greater confidence in the initial diagnosis. Further, if the doctor in the emergency room sees something that concerns them, the physician could admit you to the hospital, either for treatment or for further observation.

When You May Need to Go to the Hospital for a Car Accident

In the end, you may make the initial determination about where to go for treatment. Signs that you may need to go to the ER for a crash include:

• Severe pain
• Dizziness or loss of consciousness
• Serious headaches
• Difficulty with movement
• If you had any trauma to your head

Prompt Medical Care Can Help Your Legal Case

In a car accident case, prompt medical care is crucial for two reasons. The obvious reason is that your health is at stake. If you let too much time go by, it may get harder for you to make a full recovery. Taking some time to get immediate care after the accident is a worthwhile investment in your health.

Delaying medical care could harm your legal case. One of the crucial elements of the negligence test is whether the responsible party’s actions caused your injuries. If you wait too long to get medical care, and the wait makes your condition worse, the insurance company may claim that you were the cause of some of your own injuries.

They may try to cut the amount that they offer you because they believe that you were not vigilant about your own care. Insurance companies not only review medical records, but they also scrutinize the timing of when you seek care.

Contact an Orlando Car Accident Lawyer Today

You should not let the legal process go uninitiated while receiving your medical care. You need to focus on both at the same time, even though you may be dealing with significant injuries.

An experienced attorney at JustCallMoe can handle the details of your claim, keeping you informed at every step of the way, so you can make the best decisions. Do not face the legal process alone. Get an attorney on your side who can deliver results. Call us today at (866) CALL-MOE or message us online for a free initial consultation.