By: Las Vegas Now Staff
You only have to look around your office to know that cold and flu season is in full swing. If you're sick, you may be miserable. But miserable may not be an emergency.
Local health officials are concerned that symptoms of the common cold are unnecessarily clogging the system.
Rory Chetelat does not like to see long waits at emergency rooms. As manager of Emergency Medical Services for the Southern Nevada Health District, he strives to get ambulance crews in and out of ER's as quickly as possible.
He encourages patients with minor symptoms to use an alternate facility.
“The common colds, flu symptoms, ear aches, minor sore throats, those are the kinds of things better seen in an Urgent Care or in your own doctor's office. And then you won't clog up the emergency rooms — which are really designed for emergency care,” he said.
Currently, typical wait times at UMC are 4 to 6 hours. The more serious cases are seen first.
Urgent Care Physician, Dr. Frederick Lippmann says those with common cold symptoms can do everyone a favor by going to a satellite location.
“Somebody with a 102 temperature that's coughing and feels bad, that's not a life-threatening emergency. So you've taken somebody's spot that potentially has something that could kill them. And you've taken that time away from them. That's what the quick care system is set up for. That's why we have them around the whole valley,” he said.
But it's always possible for even the common cold to escalate to something more serious, including pneumonia, requiring a justifiable need for emergency care.
“If you can't get your fever down with normal remedies, if you're coughing up gross amounts of mucous, your body feels like you got run over by the mac truck, then you should probably come to the ER or Quick Care,” adds Lippmann.
The health district recommends that elderly patients, or those with chronic conditions such as diabetes, speak with their primary care doctor about whether their symptoms need emergency care.
