WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. -- Deciding whether to go to the hospital emergency room is not always easy. 

For example, if someone is having chest pains and thought they were having a heart attack or just caught a young child drinking a bottle of liquid Motrin, they would probably either call 911 or go to the ER as quickly as possible. 

Many medical issues aren't as clear. Should a person go to the ER if they have a high fever or because you just twisted your ankle playing intramural softball? Can it wait until the clinic opens the next morning? The 509th Medical Group has after-hours procedures to manage healthcare needs when the clinic is closed. 

The first option is to call the Nurse Triage line at 687-2188, option 1. This service is provided by Air Combat Commandand is staffed by registered nurses with years of experience in telephone triage. Depending on your condition and symptoms, these nurses may direct you to the emergency room or an urgent care clinic, or they could refer you to the clinic the next duty day or even give you home care advice. It is important to understand the difference between the emergency room and urgent care. 

Emergency rooms are the sections of a health care facility intended to provide rapid treatment for victims of sudden illness or trauma. ERs are staffed not only by doctors and nurses, but with physician assistants and nurse practitioners with specialized training in emergency medicine. Most hospital ERs operate around the clock, but staffing levels are usually much lower at night. 

Because many uninsured Americans use ERs as their only means of receiving care, waits in an ER can be very lengthy if your condition isn't an emergency. Urgent care clinics are typically not staffed and equipped to handle true medical emergencies like trauma from a motor vehicle accident, but they are staffed to handle conditions that require fast medical attention, such as sore throats with fever and ear infections. And, if you have a real emergency, the urgent care center will help you get to an ER for the care you need. 

Besides the higher cost (ER visits are approximately four times the cost of an urgent care visit), an ER visit usually is not recorded in your medical record in a timely manner. Many ERs treat patients with no documentation of prior medical history, and their documentation can be a simple folder or paper with just a record of that specific visit. Things such as medication lists, lab results and treatment records are not shared between the 509th MDG and downtown ERs. 

So next time you are unsure whether your after-hours issue is a medical emergency, take advantage of the triage service provided by the Medical Group. The nurses will assess your condition based on symptoms you provide and direct you towards the appropriate level of care. If your condition is an emergent one, you will be told to go to the ER. 

If it is less urgent but still needs treatment quickly, you will be sent to a local Urgent Care Clinic. Referrals to an urgent care clinic are quite different than the ER. The focus at the 509th MDG is to ensure Team Whiteman receives the most appropriate, timely and cost-effective care possible whether it's in the base clinic or downtown.