While there is a focus on preventive medicine in primary care, and for good reason, sometimes sicknesses, injuries, and more can affect you or your children suddenly no matter how much you’ve worked to prevent it. 

And what’s worse is that when you do get sick all of a sudden, it’s not like you have a doctor’s appointment that week to seek treatment and get better.

When this happens, we’re here to help!

Same Day Appointments

At Westside Family Medicine, we offer same day appointments at all of our locations. So when you need us unexpectedly, we’re here for you. If you weren’t planning on getting sick (of course we never do!), we have plenty of options to see you quickly and take care of your ailments.

Same day appointments are available to all patients, established or new to us.

Here are a few of the most common acute conditions we see patients same day for, and how we help with each: 

Cold or Flu

Flu season is certainly a thing and if you didn’t come in for your annual flu shot, you may end up with a flu you just can’t kick. But sometimes, it might not be the flu and something else entirely—even just a bad cold.

No matter what it is, we’ll help you figure out the what so we can formulate a plan to help you feel better faster.

Sometimes we’ll diagnose a virus, other times it may be caused by bacteria. Depending on the true cause of your illness, we’ll prescribe medications or a simple treatment plan, as well as the possibility of checking back in if the treatment doesn’t work and the illness needs another evaluation.

Injury

Nobody plans to get injured, but it happens. Whether you were putting up holiday lights and fell, lifted something too heavy, or had another accident, injuries require medical attention.

Even if you don’t think you broke your finger, another opinion is always necessary because if you did injure that finger to the point that it broke and you didn’t seek treatment, it could heal incorrectly and cause long-term damage that affects its future use.

Once you come in, we’ll be able to evaluate the injury, take x-rays if it’s necessary, and help alleviate the pain while confirming a course of action that will heal it.

Infections

You might not know you have an infection when you need care, but this is often what we end up diagnosing when patients come in with unexpected symptoms that have grown bad enough to seek medical attention.

These can look like ear infections, sinus infections, and anything else that would accompany a fever with seemingly unknown causes.

These illnesses often start small, with a mild headache or congestion, and worsen over the course of a few days until you can no longer manage on your own—nor should you! Ignoring an infection can only make it worse over time.

For these patients, we’ll assess the symptoms and do our usual checks for temperature and feeling of the lymph nodes. From here, we’ll make our diagnosis and prescribe medications that will help, along with a set of care instructions and a potential follow-up appointment.

Pain

There are so many things that can cause pain, and most of us aren’t able to detect the causes by ourselves. Depending on what type of pain and where it’s located, it can also be really dangerous to ignore.

For that reason, we always recommend that you come in for a same-day appointment if you’re suddenly hit with an unexpected pain.

Once here, we’ll fully evaluate you to get a sense of where the pain may be coming from. We’ll determine a cause and put together a solution and instructions for care in the meantime. In severe cases, if the pain is dangerous, we may recommend more extreme remedies.

Mental Health 

Mental health is health and we will always make sure you know it. There are many reasons you might suddenly decide to come in to see what treatment options are available.

Maybe you’ve been feeling this way for a while and have hit a breaking point. Maybe you’re experiencing new feelings that are difficult to deal with and aren’t sure what to do.

Our same day appointments are available to those seeking mental health treatment just as much as anything else because your brain is your body. In fact, it’s one of the most important parts.

Yearly Checkups

Don’t forget that you should also see your PCP when you aren’t acutely in need of care as well!

Yearly checkups are important for understanding your full medical history, taking blood work, and more. Plus, when unexpected needs arise, you’ll feel more comfortable coming back to your established provider.

Click here to schedule a yearly checkup appointment and always reach out when you need to book a same-day! We have locations in the Upper West Side, Lincoln Square, Carnegie Hill, Brooklyn, and Jersey City.