Taking A Look At The Growing Importance Of Urgent Care Centers Here In The United States

Getting medical treatment when you really need it should be a must. However, many people simply are unaware of where they should go to get that treatment, especially during hours and days when the typical doctor’s office will be closed. For people who don’t have medical insurance, the conundrum becomes an even steeper one.

Fortunately, urgent care centers are spreading all throughout the United States, providing more and more options for accessible healthcare all throughout the country as a whole. For many people, urgent care locations are ideal for a wide variety of conditions, from those that are very minor to those that are quite considerably more severe. And there are a number of reasons that you, as a patient, should consider going to an urgent care center before seeking treatment in a local emergency room.

For one thing, urgent care centers tend to have drastically reduced waiting times in comparison to the typical ER. As a matter of fact, the average urgent care center will have a waiting time that does not exceed 30 minutes, something that can be said for more than 90% of all such medical clinics here in the United States. And more than half of all urgent care clinics – as much as 60% of them, to be just a little bit more specific – have average wait times that do not even exceed 15 minutes at the very most. If you’re in a rush, going to a local walk in clinic is a far better choice than going to an emergency room, where you’ll likely wait for an hour or more before ever seeing a member of the medical team.

And urgent care centers tend to be open far more frequently than doctor’s offices of the typical nature, as up to 85% of all urgent care centers that are found throughout the country will be open seven days of the week, sometimes even on holidays. And in addition to this, some urgent care locations are even actually open at all hours of the day, similar to an emergency room. For health problems that develop early in the morning or late at night (or on the weekends, as the case might be), having access to such a medical clinic can make a world of difference.

With up to 20,000 fully qualified doctors employed at such walk in clinics all throughout the country, urgent care centers can provide a wider variety of medical treatments than many people actually realize. As a matter of fact, up to 80% of all walk in clinics here in the United States are actually currently able to not only diagnose fractures, but to treat them as well. In addition to this already impressive fact, nearly three quarters of all urgent care locations can also provide IV fluids, should they at any point become necessary for a patient.

Minor allergic reactions, such as a reaction to poison ivy, can be seen at urgent care locations as well. After all, poison ivy is an incredibly common plant – and one that the vast majority of people will have a negative and inflammatory reaction to. It’s estimated, at the current date, that as much as 85% of the entire population of the United States would be considered to be allergic to poison ivy. As poison ivy can be found in every state here in the continental United States, the treatment of poison ivy is very common in medical treatment from coast to coast and all places in-between as well.

Common infections can also be diagnosed and treated with ease and almost every single urgent care center, if not just every single one of them at that. The urinary tract infection, for instance, is so commonplace that more than eight million cases will be diagnosed here in the United States over the course of just one year alone. Fortunately, such a condition is typically treated by a single round of antibiotics. If the infection has spread to the kidneys by the time that the patient has sought out treatment, very strong antibiotics are likely to be necessary for health reasons.