What You Should Know About The Average Walk In Clinic

If you’re looking to find convenient and affordable medical care, it can sometimes seem like you are fighting a losing battle. For one thing, regular doctor’s offices close quite early. For those who are unable take off work or get their for whatever other reason during regular business hours, this can be a hugely difficult thing indeed. In addition to this, most regular doctor’s offices are also not open during the weekend, something else that makes it hard to medical care whenever it is needed, as medical issues can all too easily develop during off hours.

Of course, the emergency room always presents an option for medical care and there is usually at least one emergency room in your area, if not even more than one. In fact, the emergency room is particularly popular for medical care due to the fact that you do not need to have any form of medical insurance to be granted care there. For those who are struggling to find medical care without insurance, this is hugely important indeed. But going to the emergency room for medical help is not always ideal.

For one thing, it’s costly – even more so for those who are without insurance of any medical kind. As a matter of fact, most people end up paying at least around $1,000 for the typical ER visit. For longer hospital stays, the price tag only continues to rise ever higher and higher. And going to the ER takes a long time too. While you should absolutely go into the emergency room for an emergent medical concern of any nature, going for lesser problems only really serves to clog up the waiting room. Therefore, there are not enough beds for patients and not enough doctors to go around, two things that can prolong the typical emergency room experience quite immensely.

Fortunately, the rise of the walk in clinic over the course of the nearly last two decades has helped to defer some of the patients that the typical emergency room has seen. In fact, it has been found that up to 65% of all emergency room patients could have instead been treated with ease in a comprehensive manner in the nearest medical walk in clinic. Fortunately, more and more people are going to walk in clinics than ever, with up to three million people attending one walk in clinic or another over the course of the week, seeking medical care and treatment from one of the 20,000 doctors working there, two numbers that are likely to see considerable growth over the course of the upcoming years, much as recent growth has been seen in prior years as well.

For many people, going to a walk in clinic is simply one of the most convenient ways to get medical care as well. For instance, the majority of such walk in clinics are actually open every day of the week, including weekends – up to 85% of them, as of the most recent data gathered on the subject. The waiting times at such walk in medical clinics are also much better. In the average walk in medical clinic – in up to 90% of them, as the case currently is – the average wait time is no greater than just one half of an hour, half of what it is at the typical emergency room. In addition to this, more than 60% of all walk in clinics actually have wait time that are no greater than a mere 15 minutes, on average. Therefore, it is not uncommon for a patient to be in and out of your typical walk in clinic all within the span of just one hour, which is surely a short span of time indeed.

Ultimately, choosing a walk in clinic for your next medical need is going to be more than beneficial at the end of the day. For many people, the typical walk in clinic will save them both time as well as money, and therefore the walk in clinic provides a much needed contrast to the typical emergency room location, even though such an institution still plays an important role indeed all throughout the United States.