Unfortunately in the age of modern medicine, actually accessing healthcare has become a real problem. It is not uncommon for patients to call up a doctor that they've been seeing for years for an urgent situation and told that the next available appointment is in weeks or months. It is not uncommon for health care practices to put automated messages on their telephone lines that state "if this is an urgent or emergent situation please hang up and dial 9-1-1". And while true that many situations do absolutely require emergency rooms, there are many situations that would not but patients wind up going there anyway because their doctor is too busy. This side of medicine is a rapidly developing problem as primary care / family medicine providers become less and less numerous and the number of patients is getting exponentially larger. To complicate the matter further, many practices require patients to be "established" before they will see patients in ANY scenario. Some practices can book out 4-6 months for new patient establish care appointments, some may not even be accepting new patients at all. The point of all of this is to help you understand that to truly get the care you need, when you need it, will require you to make a plan before it happens. If you wait until the last minute when an urgent situation arises you may be shocked to find that there is no where to go except the ER. But if you take the time ahead of time to call around, set your self up with a primary care who has high availability and access who you can actually get ahold of, you will find yourself in a much different situation.

My advice to you is to call your doctor, find out how long they book out for new patient appointments, do they save time slots for urgent situations (or do they just send patients to urgent care), find out if you'll get to see YOUR doctor or just whomever is available, and finally, see if there are other practices in the area that can do better.

Be smart, and remember the time to address your health is before you get hurt or sick. Not after it happens. Please feel free to reach out if you have questions