Yeah. Rather than your typical urgent care facility, this was the hospital's initial effort to significantly expand its effective service area. It was a quite substantial building -- since expanded to the size of some hospitals -- and they had labeled what I used an "emergency room". My family suggested going there as it was a lot closer.
That ER doctor just gave me the prescriptions and sent me off. No follow-up care. I guess you'd have had to see my level of discomfort. My family was equally surprised and disappointed.
I take your point. And much of the U.S. health care system keeps pushing patients towards urgent care and "the doctor at hand". Not that there aren't good urgent care staff; nonetheless, it doesn't exactly promote medical management.
Also, I've delayed some care because I've been uncertain of the approach and awaited more information and perhaps improved procedures and techniques. This might well be called a conservative approach -- and these days, so much of the U.S. rhetoric is about the need to be "conservative". Well, much of that is actually "Conservative", which is actually a rather different ideology.
Yet, insurance keeps worsening by the year. Patients who might otherwise be inclined to be conservative and await better knowledge as well as what would normally be lower costs (in most other industries, "product" costs decline with age and with technical improvements and growing marketshare). Well, in U.S. health care, patients can feel compelled to "act now", because while technology and standards of care may improve, next year's insurance may well not cover it or cover it enough for it to be affordable ($5000 deductible? $7500?), if one even has insurance next year.