Urgent care is now a key part of the U.S. healthcare landscape, and it comes in many forms. It can be part of a retail operation, such as an urgent care facility housed inside of a national pharmacy like CVS or Walgreens. Or it can be a stand-alone facility owned privately by a single doctor or a consortium of doctors. Some hospitals also have urgent care facilities, either inside the hospital or as separate brick-and-mortar buildings. These are just several examples, and there are many variations on this theme.

As of 2024, there were more than 14,000 urgent care centers in the United States. The states of New York, California, Texas and Florida have the largest number of urgent care centers. In southern Florida, the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-Pompano metropolitan area has over 200 urgent care clinics.

Urgent care systems differ from hospitals and emergency rooms in several important ways. They are mostly meant to deal with a wide spectrum of non-threatening illnesses and injuries such as respiratory problems, strep throat, sprains, minor burns, fevers, cuts requiring stitches, and similar issues. In most cases, patients don’t need appointments and can walk in to get served. While they have extended hours, most urgent care facilities aren’t open on a 24-hour-a-day basis like emergency rooms. Finally, they are much less expensive. A recent study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine reported that the costs and fees from emergency room visits are about ten times those from treatment at an urgent care facility, even given exactly the same diagnosis and treatment.

For emergencies like chest pain, which may indicate a heart attack, and weakness and numbness, which may indicate a stroke, it’s important to go directly to the emergency room. Urgent care facilities are not intended to deal with these types of medical situations.

Urgent care facilities, like any medical facility, can engage in medical malpractice. Common types of medical malpractice include misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis, surgical errors, and medication errors. What should you do if you think you’ve suffered harm due to medical malpractice at an urgent care facility?

Elements of a Medical Malpractice Case

If you think you or a loved one were a victim of medical malpractice at an urgent care facility, you may have a claim for compensation. In Florida, you must prove the following elements to be successful in your claim:

• The healthcare provider owed you a duty of care.
• The duty of care was breached.
• The breach caused your injuries.
• Your injuries are compensable.

If you’ve gone to the urgent care facility for healthcare services, you need to prove that the healthcare provider owed you a duty of care. Under well-established legal principles, doctors and healthcare providers owe their patients a duty of care. To show that the duty was breached, you need to be able to prove that the medical provider did not meet the standard of care. This is where negligence comes into play from a legal perspective. To prove the breach caused your injuries is essentially a “but for” analysis. That is, but for the provider’s actions, you would not have suffered injuries. For injuries to be compensable, you must prove that you suffered economic and/or non-economic damages.

In Florida, damages include economic damages, non-economic damages and punitive damages. Economic damages are out-of-pocket expenses. These can be things like medical fees, rehabilitation fees, in-home care fees, lost wages, and similar costs. Non-economic damages are subjective, non-monetary losses. They include things like pain and suffering, infliction of emotional distress, loss of companionship and consortium, and similar costs. Punitive damages are only available in severe cases of gross or intentional misconduct.

Contact Haliczer Pettis & Schwamm

Your medical malpractice case must be filed within two years of your injury, so it’s important not to delay in contacting a Ft. Lauderdale medical malpractice attorney or Orlando medical malpractice lawyer at Haliczer Pettis & Schwamm as soon as you suspect you or a loved one has been harmed by a healthcare provider.

Here at Haliczer Pettis & Schwamm, we have handled numerous medical malpractice cases for our clients. Our breadth and depth of experience in this area of the law is unmatched in the state of Florida. What differentiates us from other law firms is our extensive medical knowledge and our highly rated client service. If you believe you’ve suffered injury from medical care provided to you by an urgent care facility, contact us today for a free consultation.