Looking At The Importance Of Urgent Care Centers
Getting medical treatment can be difficult there in the United States, with doctor’s offices closed during early morning, evenings, and typically on the weekends as well (though some might have limited office hours on Saturdays). For many people, the emergency room can often seem to be the only solution. For those who do not have health care insurance, this is also often the case.
But the emergency room is far from an ideal place to receive medical care unless, of course, you are actually experiencing a medical emergency. For more minor medical cases, emergency rooms promise long wait time, an average of fifty eight minutes, if not more, spent waiting just to be seen. Likely many more hours will pass before you are ultimately able to be diagnosed, treated, and discharged.
In addition to this, emergency room locations are often prohibitively expensive, though they will take any patient whether they have insurance or not. Even for minor concerns you’ll still likely pay more than $500, and it’s not uncommon at all to see medical bills and hospital fees that exceed $1000, if not even significantly more than that. But for many people, their does not seem to be any great or viable alternative to the typical emergency room location.
Fortunately, urgent care centers all throughout the country have been changing this. Urgent care locations are becoming more popular than ever before across the country, with as many as three million people visiting them on a weekly basis. Nowadays, there are more than 7,000 such medical clinics in the United States alone, a number that is only likely to grow in the years that are to come. Already, up to 20,000 fully trained doctors are employed at them, ready to give each and every patient the best medical care possible.
But what makes these urgent care locations a better alternative to the emergency rooms here in the United States? For one thing, urgent care centers are much more efficient, with more than 90% of them having what times of less than thirty minutes and more than half them having wait times of no greater than fifteen minutes. In addition to this, the average patient that visits an urgent care location is likely to be in and out within the hour. As up to 85% of them are open every single day of the week, the ability to gain access to treatment is vast.
And urgent care locations can treat a wider array of conditions than many people realize. In fact, up to 80% of all urgent care locations in the United States alone provide fracture care and diagnosis, a more advanced level of treatment than many people would assume that they were even capable of. In addition to this, severe sprains can also be treated as well, which is certainly good news, as up to 25,000 ankle sprains will occur over the course of just one single day.
Many illnesses can also be diagnosed and treated at urgent care locations and medical walk in clinics. For instance, the common ear infection can be diagnosed at an urgent care center. As many children are very prone to getting ear infections, getting a diagnosis and treatment course for one without having to make a doctor’s appointment is very much ideal for many of their busy parents. In addition to this, UTIs (also known as urinary tract infections) can be diagnosed with a simple urine test in just about any urgent care center in this country.
Finally, many urgent care centers in the United States can even provide flu vaccinations, helping to prevent disease before it ever even strikes. While many people erroneously tend to think of the flu as simply a more severe version of a common cold (of which there are at least one billion cases each and ever year), this is far from the case. The flu can all too easily become dangerous, especially in the very young, the very old, and those who have weakened immune systems.
All in all, urgent care centers are hugely important in the United States. These urgent care centers provide a viable alternative to emergency room care.
