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

Those exposures occurred in hospital and urgent care settings, according to the Southwest Utah Public Health Department. —Erika Edwards, NBC news, 22 Oct. 2025

For a county-run system that operates four hospitals, two trauma centers, 15 urgent care clinics and a regional burn center, some 450 employees are trained to be ready to assist. —Julia Prodis Sulek, Mercury News, 22 Oct. 2025

The urgent care physician assistant took X-rays and nothing was broken. —Harlan Selesnick, Miami Herald, 16 Oct. 2025

Reporting directly from Gaza, Gaza’s Twins, Come Back to Me by Mohammed Sawwaf follows a mother desperate to reach her two newborn babies in urgent care, evacuated amid bombings and prevented from seeing them by travel restrictions and checkpoints. —Matthew Carey, Deadline, 14 Oct. 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