Emergencies and Urgent Care

When you or your family need urgent care, we can help!

Urgent care is a convenient option for getting medical care when it’s not an emergency and your primary care provider is not available. Urgent care usually does not require making an appointment ahead of time.

As an AmeriHealth Caritas District of Columbia (DC) enrollee, you have multiple options for accessing urgent care:

• Video or phone appointments — Talk to a provider over the phone or by video chat.
• Urgent care at home — Call the AmeriHealth Caritas DC provider that offers enrollees urgent medical care at home.
• No-cost transportation — Schedule a ride to an urgent care clinic near you.
• 24/7 Nurse Call Line — Call the nurse line with health questions or for help deciding if you should go to an urgent care clinic, your provider’s office, or the emergency room.

Urgent care or emergency?

Urgent care is medical care you need within 24 hours that might not be for an emergency.

Emergency care is medical care you need right away for a serious, sudden (sometimes life-threatening) injury or illness. An emergency injury or illness could cause your whole body or parts of your body to stop working or to not work correctly. If you have an emergency, call 911 or go to the emergency room.

The chart below provides some examples of when you may need to go to an urgent care location or the emergency room. If you aren’t sure where you should go to get care, call your primary care provider’s (PCP) office or the 24/7 Nurse Call Line at 1-877-759-6279.