From breathing difficulties to chest pain to miner wounds, there are many cases in which it is highly advisable to seek medical care. However, going to your general care practitioner is not always possible, especially if it is early in the morning, late in the evening, or on the weekend. In some cases, people find it difficult to take the time off of work to take themselves or their children to the doctor.
In many cases, people thing that going to the emergency room is the only way to get effective care. However, going to the ER is not often ideal. For one thing, emergency rooms have immense wait times. In fact, you’re even likely to wait for up to an hour, if not even longer, before seeing a doctor. Even after you see a doctor, you’re likely in for a long stay at any given hospital emergency room, even if you’ve gone in for a relatively minor medical concern.
Of course, emergency rooms are hugely expensive as well, something that can’t be overlooked for many people. While emergency rooms will take all types of patients, even those who are not insured, they also will cost an arm and a leg, money that many people simply don’t have. The standard emergency room visit, in fact, will cost more than one thousand dollars at the end of the day – and sometimes far more than this.
Fortunately, urgent care centers provide an alternative option for immediate care and immediate treatment for those who are looking to avoid the emergency room. In fact, most cases that need immediate care and immediate treatment can easily be treated in an urgent care location, with only around three percent of cases first seen at an urgent care location needing to be sent to the emergency room. Conversely, up to sixty five percent of all cases seen in any given emergency room location throughout the United States would actually have been able to be treated in the nearest urgent care location.
And with the need and the desire for affordable immediate care and immediate treatment rising, urgent care centers are also on the rise. Currently, there are more than seven thousand urgent care locations all throughout the United States, a number that is only likely to rise as the years pass. And urgent care centers are often a much better place to seek immediate care than the emergency room.
For one thing, it’s important to note that urgent care centers have much lower wait times, providing much more immediate care than the typical emergency room would be able to do. Typically, urgent care centers have wait times less than thirty minutes (as is the case in more than ninety percent of all urgent care locations). For more than half of all urgent care centers, the average wait time that is seen is no greater than fifteen minutes.
And the immediate treatment that the typical urgent care center can provide is more diverse than many people are even aware of. In fact, most urgent care centers – up to eighty percent of them – can even provide the diagnosis of fractures, as well as fracture care. And as many as seventy percent of all urgent care locations all throughout this country can give IV fluids when they are deemed to be necessary. So while it is of course important to seek immediate treatment at emergency room locations when it is truly a medical emergency, even more severe medical conditions can be treated at most urgent care centers.
Of course, immediate treatment is also possible for much more minor medical conditions. For instance, antibiotics can be provided for a number of conditions. Ear infections can easily be diagnosed and treated in an urgent care setting, as can Urinary Tract Infections (also known as UTIs), of which more than eight million occur each and every year. In addition to this, minor wound repair and care can also be provided, as can treatment for conditions like sprained ankles, of which at least twenty five thousand will occur each and every day here in the United States alone.
