If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 immediately. St. Mary’s Medical Center Emergency Room is an emergency room, commonly called an E.R., providing critical and life saving healthcare services to patients throughout the San Francisco area through their location at 450 Stanyan St. They are required by law to be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even on national holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.
While their availability can be enticing, you should really only visit an E.R. if you absolutely have to as they can be quite expensive and have much longer wait times than an walk-in urgent care center. In fact, some insurance carriers have begun to refuse paying for emergency room visits that were in fact non-emergent. An interesting fact that about 50% of emergency room diagnosis could be addressed at a quicker, less expensive urgent care center.
If you are looking to learn more about emergency rooms and when (and when not) to visit one, statistics, trends, FAQs and other useful information, check out our blog to empower your knowledge as a healthcare consumer.