If you have read my first post on retail clinics or if you have visited one recently, you should be familiar with this type of clinic. However, most people can’t tell the difference between a retail clinic and an urgent care clinic and therefore can’t tell which one is better for them.

Urgent care clinics treat patients that have an illness or injury that require immediate attention but is not life threatening. So are retail and urgent care clinics the same thing but have different names? Actually, no, they happen to have many differences for the patient.

For starters, most retail clinics are located inside retail/grocery stores, whereas urgent care clinics are usually free-standing in a less crowded setting. Another more meaningful difference relates to staffing. As I discussed in my last article, retail clinics are staffed by non-physician providers, such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners, with remote physician supervision.

Urgent care centers, on the other hand, have at least one physician that is present at the clinic all the time, even though care can be delivered by a physician assistant, nurse practitioner or nurse. Which brings us to the major difference.

Retail clinics can treat only minor illnesses. These are the types of conditions they can usually treat:

  • allergies
  • bladder infections
  • bronchitis
  • ear infections
  • flu
  • mononucleosis
  • pink eye and styes
  • sinus infections
  • strep throat
  • ear infections
  • swimmer’s ear
  • athlete’s foot
  • cold sores
  • deer tick bites
  • impetigo
  • minor burns
  • minor skin infections and rashes
  • minor sunburn
  • poison ivy
  • ringworm
  • shingles
  • wart removal

Urgent care centers can treat these same minor conditions, in addition to more serious conditions such as sprains, strains, lacerations, contusions, back pain, fractures and even minor surgeries. Moreover, retail clinics treat children only 18 months and older, whereas urgent care clinics can treat all ages.

So if you have a major but non-life threatening condition, you are better off at the urgent care center. However, if you only have a minor thing, and have the choice, you can be seen much faster at a retail clinic where average wait times are 15 minutes, whereas average waiting time at urgent care ones can be anywhere between 15 and 45 minutes.

Which one is a better for my pocket, you might be asking? I will talk about this in the next post.