Tired of sitting in a waiting room packed with the ill and injured when you need to see an urgent-care physician?
A Mesa-based urgent care provider with two locations in Tucson feels your pain.
NextCare Urgent Care is now offering patients the option to check in online or by phone.
"It allows them to wait in the comfort of their own home instead of waiting with other sick people," said John Shufeldt, NextCare's CEO and founder.
Shufeldt said he got the idea from a restaurant that didn't take reservations, but allowed people to call in before arriving to put their name on a waiting list.
He figured letting people check in ahead of time could also apply to his clinics.
The process, dubbed WAHOO — or "wait at home or office" — lets patients fill in the needed check-in information at NextCare's Web site. Those who call ahead talk to a representative who fills out the information for them.
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They can then decide how much time they'll need to get to the clinic, and wait for a phone call telling them when a room will be ready.
Patients who come into the clinics can also opt to head home and wait for a call.
Kariman Pierce, 36, a Tucson mother with boys ages 5 and 2, said she and her husband would likely use online check-in if they had an ailment that required them to visit urgent care. She takes her children, though, to a children's emergency room with a pediatric focus.
For herself and her husband, avoiding the waiting room would be a good thing, Pierce said.
"Waiting rooms are fairly distasteful in general," she said. "How many sick people are sitting there passing it around?"
And with children it can be a hassle to sit in a waiting room before getting medical attention, she said. "It does put a burden on the whole family, and not knowing how long is a problem," she said. So the option to stay at home until a room is available is appealing.
Other Tucson clinics have procedures in place to cut down patient waiting times, though officials at the clinics, when contacted Wednesday, said they don't have online check-in.
Urgent Care Associates, which has two Tucson locations, has an online form that people can download on their computer and fill out before they come in to speed up the check-in process. It also lets patients leave the clinic and come back without losing their place in line, said Mary Rodenboh, practice manager.
El Dorado Urgent Care, 1400 N. Wilmot Road, also has downloadable check-in forms and it takes appointments and accepts walk-ins, said medical director and co-owner Lane Tassin.
"Some people have a hard time planning ahead and making appointments and there's always unexpected things that happen," Tassin said. For those people, walking into a clinic may be preferable, he said.
Rodenboh said Urgent Care Associates' had no immediate plans to change its check-in procedure.
She has some concerns about what might happen if a patient who checked in online needed prompt medical care.
"We want to make sure that they don't even sit down and start waiting here if they have something going on that requires they be seen immediately," Rodenboh said. Sometimes patients are taken by ambulance to an emergency department.
When it comes to patient safety, Shufeldt, NextCare's CEO, said the online forms are checked within minutes of being submitted and if it appears patients have serious conditions, they are called and advised to seek immediate medical attention.
Amy Kelaher, a 37-year-old Tucson mother with three children, said some injuries and ailments do need immediate attention, and she can usually tell with her own family.
"I think I have a good sense of when it would be immediate and I would go to the hospital," she said. Otherwise, going online or calling ahead to check in could be convenient, she said.
As for what happens when patients who've been sitting around waiting watch someone come in and go straight to a room, Shufeldt said there's a patient concierge who makes sure everyone understands that all who are treated have been waiting in line. But, he said, it does take a "kind of finesse."
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