The Case For Urgent Care
For many people without access to a primary care physician or the time to take off work and schedule a doctor’s appointment, urgent care facilities provide a viable, accessible way to get medical treatment for ailments both big and small. Urgent care facilities are often open seven days a week, and many are even open twenty four hours every day, making them a great solution for people with busy lives. They are also considerably less expensive than an emergency room visit, which is often the only alternative for many patients who seek medical treatment in a medical walk in clinic. While the average emergency room visit cost over one thousand dollars, an urgent care clinic visit can cost as little as one hundred dollars or just slightly more.
A neighborhood health clinic and urgent care facilities can also often provide free STD testing centers, making STD testing for men and women alike considerably more accessible than it would otherwise be. STD testing kits should be utilized by every person that is sexually active, but many people are not aware that it’s a regular test that they should have. Without a primary care physician, STD testing kits can be difficult to come by and urgent care facilities help to bridge that gap.
Urgent care facilities also have a much reduced wait time than emergency rooms. For example, the average wait time in your typical emergency room recently increased to be around 58 minutes from 46 minutes, meaning you would have to wait an hour or more for even a minor concern. Wait times in urgent care facilities are much shorter. Some urgent care facilities even have an average wait time as low as fifteen minutes.
We will soon have a shortage of doctors in this country. In fact, it’s projected that we will need over 50,000 more primary care doctors by 2025, less than ten years from now, in order to meet our country’s medical needs. Urgent care doctors can help to meet this need, as urgent care is ever growing, currently employing around 20,000 doctors and medical professionals.
Urgent care facilities help to provide medical care for those who might not otherwise have access to it. It is considerably more affordable than seeking medical treatment in an emergency room and is often much more time effective as well. Urgent care centers can treat a number of conditions and provide many different medical services, from STD testing to skin cancer checks. Many urgent care facilities can even diagnose and treat fractures.
