Contact
- 803-283-2300
- Fax: 803-392-4550
- mdfpuc@mdfirsthealthcare.com
Office Hours
- Mon: 8AM – 5.30pm
Tue: 8AM – 5.30pm
Wed: 8AM – 5.30pm
Thu: 8AM – 5.30pm
Fri: 8AM – 5.30pm
Sat: 8AM – 2.00pm
Sun: Closed
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Urgent care centers have become a highly new way for people to gain care. Over the last decade, many families have begun going to urgent centers to help treat fractures, bronchitis, and other ailments that need attention but don’t need the emergency room. For those needing primary care, offices have begun changing the way their practice runs by offering laboratory services, x-rays, and stitches. For the primary and urgent hybrid, laboratory services provide patients with numerous options to receive the care they need.
As medical practices change over time, the healthcare industry grows and evolves with new demands. As protocols are being set in place for healthcare, areas experiencing larger degrees of illness, longer turnaround times, and supply shortages can make caring for families highly difficult to maintain. As primary care offices only work in scheduled settings and emergency rooms are constantly overflowing with people, families that require urgent services don’t have the space to treat a fractured ankle or a bad case of bronchitis. In those scenarios where answers are needed, that’s where urgent care centers come in to help.
Within urgent care and primary care centers, they can provide:
In many ways, the ideal practice can treat both non-emergency issues and urgent care issues, addressing people’s health on both a short and long-term scale to provide all-around healthcare for everyone. With the development of urgent and primary care centers in place, people can receive better and faster care throughout their lives. From safe, responsible testing to cleaning up a nasty wound, we’re here to help.
For physicians that work within urgent care centers, the purpose of their careers is to provide safe, responsible health care that helps families grow. By providing these services, these centers can better identify health conditions, prevent future illnesses, and avoid emergency room visits for conditions and ailments that don’t require emergency treatment. Whether you’re suffering from a severe cough that needs attention or just fell and fractured your leg, we are here to help. For more information about having both primary and urgent care, contact us to learn more about what medical services we provide and how we can help you.
Staying healthy is something we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about when we’re kids and teenagers. As we enter our 20’s, we’re often so happy to be out of the house and moving on with our lives that it continues to remain pushed to the side. After all, with education, entry-level jobs, and striving to advance in our careers and lives, who has time to think about eating healthy and staying active? Unfortunately, this leaves many of us entering our 30th year a bit behind the health curve and struggling to get some traction before a slowing metabolism turns losing weight into a Sisyphean task.
If you’re starting out in your 20’s and trying to figure out how to make sure you enjoy a long and active lifestyle, you’re already starting off on the right foot. The sooner you start getting a handle on your physical health, the more likely you are to avoid developing health issues later in life. Too many of us rely on our youthful resilience to see us through these years with the thought that “I’m too young to worry about my health.” Nothing could be further from the truth. You should start the following habits to get the most out of your 20’s and a great start on your 30’s and beyond:
On top of all this, make sure you get enough sleep and always use sunscreen when going outside. Sleep is among the most essential gifts you can give your body to keep it at peak performance. Like any machine, it needs enough downtime and maintenance to keep working properly, and sleep is when this happens.
While everyone should have a physician they regularly see to help maintain personal care, not everyone has (or can afford) a personal trainer. If you have a gym membership, you can check in to see what deals or prices they have, as some can come quite cheaply. You don’t have to employ a trainer every time you work out either! Indulging in a trainer every once in a while to make sure you’re staying on track to your health goals can go a long way towards improving your life in years to come.
Telehealth is a virtual and remote form of medical care that has been taking hold even before the pandemic began. During the pandemic, it has seen a meteoric rise as it provides doctors with the ability to meet with their patients, provide diagnoses, and prescribe medication from a distance. Without an office visit being involved, doctors have been able to see more patients, maintain sterile practices, and stay safe. This new option for medical care is still on the rise, and it’s unlikely that it will be going anywhere after the pandemic is over.
One of the cornerstones of the rise of Telehealth has been the availability of high-speed internet and video conferencing services. Many medical concerns don’t actually require a visit to the office to get diagnosed and treated but instead can be identified and managed remotely. Not only does this make things easier for the patient being treated, but it prevents further spread of illness by encouraging them to stay home. What other benefits are there to Telehealth?
As Telehealth continues to grow, you can expect to see more and more providers offering it as an option. Imagine it no longer being necessary to leave the comfort of your own home to get treatment when you’re sick. No more do you have to drive yourself or find someone to drive you, to get the care you need when ill. Instead, you just need to pick up a phone and reach out to your medical provider.
The first telehealth services began being offered about fifty years ago, but at that time, the services offered were minimal. As technology has grown and high-speed internet more universal, this field has been seeing substantial growth. Throughout the year’s multiple inventions came and went trying to make this field a reality, and today it’s finally become possible. From patient portals to video conference consultations, the future of telemedicine is here. There is even a growing push to create robotic surgical suites allowing skilled surgeons to treat patients anywhere on the globe that has access to them.
It’s been a long year of virus-ridden pandemic, but with any luck, it’s all slowly coming to a close. It’s too soon to do a victory dance yet, but as things sit, the Vaccine seems to be performing adequately. If the current trend and vaccination schedules continue, we should see a world where the COVID vaccine is under control in just a few months. On the way there, however, there are some questions left for many patients.
We put together a compilation of a number of the most commonly asked questions about COVID to help you manage what is hopefully the last few months of a year-long pandemic.
Those looking to get their vaccination should reach out to their medical provider to get resources. Many doctor’s offices are providing vaccination options, but there are also many vaccination centers springing up at pharmacies and stores across the United States. This is an exciting time for those of us who have lived through the pandemic. With time, patience, and a little luck, we’ll be back to living life close to normal in just a few months.
For many people, the pandemic has been easier to tolerate as the colder months came upon us. The idea of spending this colder part of the year primarily indoors was familiar to us, even if the absence of our distant family through the holidays was not. While this helped with social distancing outside of work and school hours, we still have to concern ourselves with the spread of COVID at our places of employment. With the warmer months ahead, we’re going to feel driven to spend more time outside. While the vaccine is being distributed, caution is still necessary, so we’re going to explore the mechanics of how this disease spreads indoors and out.
With all this talk about social distancing, many have gotten the impression that the primary concern is physical contact. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Social distancing helps reduce the spread of COVID through aerosol behavior, such as through coughing, sneezing, even talking. There is a risk of contact spread, but our masks and the distance we keep are addressing these other venues as well. As a result, keeping airflow moving in your workspace and maintaining ventilation systems is important. The following are a few things suggested by the EPA to address ventilation concerns:
When you’re outdoors, it’s necessary to take the more well-known steps to avoid transmission of the disease. These steps are fairly well-known and include the following:
These steps will help you both indoors and out and can ensure that you and your family stay safe from the life-threatening illness that is the Coronavirus.
We’re entering an exciting part of the pandemic as the vaccine gets introduced. For many of us, this represents a hope of returning to normalcy and a life free from masks… eventually. For now, we’re still finding out how effective this vaccine is and whether it is capable of protecting us from the mutated strains that have been discovered. Recent studies covering the newly produced vaccine are showing promising results, but caution is still necessary. It will be a while, but hopefully, soon, we can start taking steps to go back to something approaching normal. Until officially notified by the CDC, continue to social distance, wear masks, and otherwise take steps to protect you and your family from COVID.
Since the appearance of the COVID-19 virus, face masks have become part of our day to day lives. Considering the important role they play in helping us stay healthy it’s essential that we learn how to properly take care of them. While this may seem a simple concept on the surface, you may be surprised to learn how many people aren’t taking proper care of their masks. They may be reusing the same one over and over again without ever taking the time to clean it, or simply aren’t wearing them properly. This last, typified by those who won’t wear them over their nose, renders them completely ineffective.
Our masks need to be properly cared for so they can continue providing the protection that makes them so valuable. Masks aren’t self-cleaning, nor are they endlessly effective if certain steps aren’t taken to ensure they can keep working. The sad fact is that many people don’t know how to properly care for their masks. If your goal is to see your family safe and intact through the pandemic, consider the following tips when it comes to caring for your mask.
Once you’ve removed your mask, be certain to wash your hands again. After washing your mask, and before wearing it again, make sure that all the filters are in place. You’ll also want to check it for any damage or thin spots in the fabric. If these are present, be certain to discard the mask and choose another one. If you only have two masks left, it’s time to invest in more so you’ll have extras available.
Masks are a big deal, and their role in bringing the pandemic under control cannot be overstated. While wearing a mask can protect you from the disease, they are at their most effective when everyone is wearing them. It’s important that you invest in an actual mask, preferably one with built-in filters. While bandanas and other cloth face coverings offer some protection, they simply aren’t as effective as masks specifically made for the purpose. On a final note, research shows that even severe asthma patients suffer no ill effects from wearing masks.
Situated in our neck is a butterfly-shaped gland known as the thyroid. This important gland is responsible for the production of new proteins and plays a central role in controlling our metabolism. As part of the endocrine system, it is involved with the regulation of almost every organ in our body. Among the many things, it is responsible for is the regulation of cholesterol, our nervous system, calcium levels, our heart, and even the menstrual cycle. This represents just a fraction of the essential tasks our thyroid performs.
There are two common conditions associated with the thyroid, both of which involve irregularities in its activity levels. These conditions can come on as the result of certain medical conditions, age, or genetics. By understanding the symptoms associated with these conditions, treatments can be devised that can correct them. These two conditions are:
The most common methods of diagnosing these conditions are blood tests. By identifying the amount of thyroid hormones in the blood, any irregularities in the functioning of the thyroid can be identified. In some cases, imaging or physical examinations will be done to identify other possible conditions, such as thyroid cancer.
Thankfully treatments are available for both of these conditions, with methodology changing based on the severity of the disease. Given the important role that the thyroid plays in our whole body health, correcting irregularities with this gland is essential to lasting good health. Below are the treatment options available for hyper and hypothyroidism:
If you have any further concerns or questions about these conditions or think that you may be experiencing symptoms related to them, contact your physician. Identification of the condition is the first step on the road to getting the treatment you need for full management or recovery. Treating problems with the thyroid can restore an immense degree of quality of life to patients suffering from it, regardless of age.
Urgent psychiatric care is a currently underdeveloped but fairly new concept within healthcare, as there are many limited resources for this type of service. Urgent psychiatric care, in short, aims to help patients with mental health illnesses by placing mental health services within an urgent care setting. Urgent care groups that offer mental illness treatments usually encompass walk-in visits with social workers and psychiatrists, able to help patients through a mental health crisis. Some researchers have looked into the prevalence of these urgent psychiatric care centers and how their services impact the healthcare industry.
Normally, the rapid deterioration of those with mental illnesses would require hospitalization and ambulatory psychiatric assessment. Still, the delivery of these emergency services often neglects many of the overarching issues of mental health care, including access to services and developing long-term treatment plans for those with conditions such as schizophrenia and depression. Urgent psychiatric services aim to provide rapid access to those assessments and provide short-term treatments, all within an outpatient setting. Urgent care centers that offer mental health services play the intermediary role between community-based services with social workers and psychiatrists and inpatient hospitalization and provide dual roles for preventing the escalations of a mental crisis.
Studies looking into the development of urgent psychiatric services, conducted under The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, provide and review a growing body of literature that describes the interventions and services for psychiatric patients. These care models found over 1400 records of these forms of services, exploring 16 articles describing ten urgent psychiatric programs located in hospitals and throughout Canada. The study found that:
Through this analysis, the study observed a wide-spread absence of urgent psychiatric care and suggested that urgent psychiatric care services require a firm foundation to guide sustainability overtime.
Urgent psychiatric services are highly needed to provide more multidisciplinary approaches to mental health care. These services can help improve emergency and immediate care services to help lower rates of mental health crisis and high-risk patients. While these urgent psychiatric services are currently limited, these services can help establish a new level of care that’s needed for mental health patients who have limited access.
As primary physician clinics deplete and merge with urgent care centers, it has led to increased access for patients requiring medical treatment without going to the ED. For migraine patients, having this access is ever more crucial to improving the healthcare industry and how physicians treat migraines in different settings. For those who suffer intense migraines and cannot wait for their specialty appointment or medication refill, primary-urgent clinics like ours can present to patients a faster alternative. But does primary-urgent care provide better treatment than specialty clinics for migraines?
Meta-Title: How to Wrap Your Head Around Migraines
Meta- Description: If you’re suffering from intense migraines, find out why visiting a primary and urgent care center may be the best options for headache relief.
Many adults who have migraines are often left with an unusual dilemma when learning about treatment options and preventative methods. This dilemma involves what quality of care they will receive, which includes what proper medications are needed to control their migraines and what physicians will be able to provide enough attention to treat and prevent migraines effectively. According to a study reported in Preventative Medicine Reports, these subtleties in pattern and changes in procedures vary, and that preventative measures for migraines often rely heavily on the physician’s expertise and familiarity with migraine treatments.
Throughout the study, migraine-preventative patterns were observed throughout primary and specialty care practices between 2006 and 2009, with patients over 18 included in the study. Over 72% of migraine medications were prescribed by primary care physicians, with the majority of those medications including beta-blockers, antidepressants, and triptans for short term preventions for migraines. On the other, anticonvulsants, triptans were prescribed more by neurologists and psychiatrists. By observing the collective data of these prescriptions, researchers found that while there weren’t any significant differences in prescription patterns for antidepressants and beta-blockers, there were prescription patterns that determined the medication based on the patient’s presence of other conditions, such as depression and hypertension.
At our primary and urgent care center, we can narrow down the selective causes of your migraines by observing your medical history, associated conditions, and other factors and provide instant pain relief. For migraine relief, our clinic works to provide migraine treatment through:
For migraine relief, if we are unable to provide treatment, then we will recommend you to the best specialists in the area to help understand migraine triggers, what may cause your migraines, and medications to better manage them. At MD First Primary & Urgent Care, we’re here for you and can help you with any of your urgent needs.
The rising demand for emergency care services, combined with this year’s Covid-19 pandemic, has led to an increase in emergency crowding, increased costs, pressure on medical staff members, expanded waiting times, and overall less access to healthcare services. Urgent care services have begun to fill in the needs of those suffering from Covid-19 symptoms and those with other chronic health conditions. How people choose to access their health services has drastically changed; telemedicine has created an alternative route for patients not only to continue to be safe during the pandemic but also to have better access to services in urgent scenarios non-covid related.
Many studies have already begun to claim the benefits of urgent care services, where chronic conditions and patients experiencing symptoms can get a faster, ultimately more reliable response from medical professionals. However, because of the drastic changes the Covid-19 pandemic has brought, many patients have begun to choose virtual settings for their illnesses to not only slow the spread but get better access to the services they need. Studies such as those found in the Public Health Emergency COVID-19 Initiative have looked at the rapidly changing environment urgent care centers have faced and found that patients seeking urgent care services throughout the city have helped telemedicine services expand.
According to the study, the impact virtual environments had on an urgent care setting ultimately scaled to manage the volume and influx of more than 17,000 patients within a month throughout the pandemic surge. Within this influx, at least 450 has to be referred to an emergency department, and through multiple providers, found that it minimized the spread during surges. While only 49% of responding patients would have sought care within an emergency room, and 37% preferring in-person urgent care, virtual care urgent platforms have the potential to service over 800 people a day during the pandemic surge and can help patients suffering from chronic conditions receive treatment faster.
Telemedicine has the ability to treat patients on a widespread scale and help evaluate patients for a variety of conditions before being recommended to a local emergency department or specialty center. Urgent care centers with virtual capacity can provide numerous benefits for patients seeking services, such as:
Telemedicine gives providers the ability to screen patients for their symptoms, assess their risk, and provide medical attention by recommending in-person visits and specialty practices to help their pain management. Urgent care centers can have a more interactive setting with their patients, and primary-urgent care practices like ours at MD First Primary & Urgent Care can be here for you.