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Your child鈥檚 injured; or you鈥檙e experiencing chest pain; or that fever seems dangerously high. What to do?

If you go to an urgent care office, and they re-route you to the emergency room, you鈥檝e lost precious time and you鈥檙e stuck with two bills.

But if you go to an emergency room, when urgent care would have sufficed, you鈥檒l wait longer and pay much more than was necessary.

鈥淲hen you have symptoms it鈥檚 really difficult for anybody to know, do I need an Urgent Care Center, or do I need an emergency room,鈥� said Dr. William Richmond, director of emergency medicine at Tidelands Health. 鈥淚f you make the wrong choice there are significant health implications or financial implications.鈥�

Richmond said that studies show that about 30% of emergency room visits result in expensive treatment for non-emergency health issues that could have been effectively treated at an urgent care center.

But soon, Tidelands will have the answer to the what-to-do question.

The local healthcare provider plans to build a network of integrated emergency departments and urgent care centers in Horry County, with adjacent primary care offices for follow-up visits.

鈥淥ne-stop shopping鈥� is how Richmond described it. 鈥淚t will be really convenient for the patient.鈥�

You鈥檒l walk through the front door and be quickly triaged by emergency-trained physicians and nurses, who will point you in the direction of the appropriate care.

Construction will begin on the first complex later this year at the intersection of Forestbrook Road and Forest Edge Drive in Myrtle Beach, Tidelands Health President and CEO Bruce Bailey said. The emergency and urgent care departments will be housed in a 12,000-square-foot building, while the adjacent primary care offices will be 15,000 square feet in size.

The emergency department will operate around the clock, while the urgent care will be open 20 hours a day at first, and will eventually be open 24/7.

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Additional integrated facilities are planned for U.S. 501 in Conway and River Oaks Boulevard in Myrtle Beach. Bailey said a fourth will eventually be built, at a yet-to-be-determined location.

Each of the integrated ER/Urgent Cares will have about 50 employees, while another 10-20 will be employed at the primary care offices.

Tidelands is collaborating with Intuitive Health of Texas, which was founded by an emergency room doctor who developed the integrated model about 17 years ago.

The innovative treatment concept has been spreading across the country, and has finally arrived in South Carolina.

Richmond said that to his knowledge, Tidelands' integrated health care complexes will be the first in the Palmetto State.

MUSC Health, which Tidelands is aligned with, has a similar plan, on steroids. They鈥檙e planning to build 15 integrated ER and urgent care centers throughout the state.