When a victim is hurt or ill and needs medical attention, a nearby party may look online to find the best urgent care centers around, or even find 24 hour emergency care clinics in the area (if they don’t already know a place). Time may be of the essence, so the seeker may enter a simple search phrase for their area such as “the best urgent care south Miami” or “the best urgent care for children near me” and find some local results. Urgent care centers or walk in clinics are numerous and popular today, and they are a great way to have minor illnesses or wounds taken care of with professional hands. Not all such clinics are open 24 hours a day, but some are. When a seeker looks for them, they may enter “the best urgent care24 hours” to find a clinic that’s open during an odd time of day, or specify that they are looking for a childrens urgent care center (necessary for the pediatricians on staff). Meanwhile, more serious medical cases will call for emergency care, where a live may be saved. Knowing the difference between urgent and emergency care is key.
What Emergency Care Does
Emergency care is for life-threatening conditions, illnesses, and injuries, and an emergency clinics or a hospital’s ER will be needed for this. At such a medical site, there will be doctors and physicians on staff who have the training and medicine needed to get a patient stabilized and out of danger. Many emergency care sites are open 24 hours a day.
A patient may need this high level of care for major injuries, such as a broken arm or a leg, such as a broken femur. In other cases, the patient being rushed in has suffered stab wounds or bullet wounds, which may be bleeding heavily and may have damaged internal organs. Eye injuries and head injuries such as a cracked skull also call for emergency care. Meanwhile, conditions such as major chest pain or difficulty breathing may become life-threatening at any moment, if they are not already, and call for emergency care. If abdominal pain is severe, sudden, and/or long lasting, it may require emergency services since it may have been caused by something serious (such as internal bleeding or even cancer).
A hospital’s ER should not be treated as a universal healthcare center, though. It is best reserved for serious cases, and patients with minor health issues are better off going to walk in clinics (especially since that’s much cheaper and faster anyway). But some clinics today are a a hybrid model; that is, they offer the best urgent care around as well as emergency care side by side. If it’s not clear what level of care a patient may need, these hybrid clinics may be the best option. The staff there will know what to do.
Urgent Care Done Right
As mentioned above, urgent care covers a wide variety of non life-threatening, mild medical cases, and these may be the majority of medical cases in the United States today. This is a large industry; a few thousand urgent care clinics can be found across the United States today, and they are all staffed with nurse practitioners and physicians who can handle any minor medical case. These clinics tend to be small and independent, though they can form small local networks too. If a clinic is running smoothly, it may see three patients per hour, and a guest may expect a wait time of around 15 minutes before getting care. Many of these clinics are built into strip malls, though some can be found in major retailers (retail clinics) and some are even built into hospitals (they offer distinct care from the hospital itself).
Guests can visit a clinic for its pharmacy or to get medicinal relief from the common cold or flu during influenza season. Four in five convenient care centers offer bone fracture treatment, and most also offer ankle or wrist sprain treatment, too. The nurses on staff can provide stitches and bandages for shallow cuts and offer lotion and ointment for sunburns or rashes, and they can also take care of upper respiratory issues (a common reason to visit walk in clinics today).
