urgent care

noun

1

: medical care provided for illnesses or injuries which require prompt attention but are typically not of such seriousness as to require the services of an emergency room

… they have turned to one of the fastest-growing segments of American health care: urgent care, a common category of walk-in clinics with uncommon interest from Wall Street.

—Julie Creswell

—often used before another noun

If your leg or arm is sore and swollen, go to an urgent care center; if you have chest pain, shortness of breath or you're coughing up blood, get to an emergency room.

—Rick Nathanson

The athlete sustains an inversion or eversion ankle injury and is evaluated at a local emergency room or urgent care facility.

—James S. Keene

2

: medical care of an urgent nature

Strokes now are the focus of a broad new public-awareness campaign labeling them as "brain attacks," needing the same urgent care as heart attacks.

—Marilyn Chase

Examples of urgent care in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Plans call for a 200,000-square-foot medical office building with four floors above ground and a basement, hosting a cancer center, urgent care, an ambulatory surgery center and three floors of physician offices. —Paul Sisson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 25 Sep. 2025

At the urgent care unit, the area was numbed and a small incision was made. —Lucy Notarantonio, MSNBC Newsweek, 24 Sep. 2025

For example, an observational study published in June in the found that older veterans who received RSV shots were about 80 percent less likely to develop an infection, visit an emergency department or urgent care or be hospitalized compared with unvaccinated veterans. —Liz Szabo, Scientific American, 23 Sep. 2025

On the morning of February 12, 2017, the Cunninghams took Sanaa to an urgent care facility after Lisa observed that Sanaa was cold to the touch. —Perry Vandell, AZCentral.com, 22 Sep. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1973, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for urgent care

• aftercare
• anywhere
• billionaire
• chinaware
• debonair
• dinnerware
• disrepair
• doctrinaire
• earthenware
• everywhere
• frigidaire
• kitchenware