There are many reasons to go to urgent care centers, especially as urgent care centers are become more widespread than ever, at least here in the United States. In fact, there are now more than 7,000 such urgent care locations located throughout the entirety of this country. And more people are attending them than ever, with more than a full one quarter of the population having attended at least one urgent care center over the course of the last two years.
The reasons to go to urgent care centers are certainly vast, including the short wait time that many such medical clinics are able to boast – especially in direct comparison to the typical emergency room. In fact, the average emergency center will have a wait time of at least one full hour – if not even longer than that, if you are presenting with a non emergent medical concern. At the typical urgent care center, your wait will be considerably shorter. More than 90% of all such medical clinics boast wait times of no more than a mere 30 minutes. More than half of them even have average wait times of no more than 15 total minutes. This is one of the reasons to go to urgent care locations, but it is only one of many.
One of the other reasons to go to urgent care centers is due to the lower cost that they provide, again in comparison to your average emergency room. After all, emergency room visits can be hugely costly indeed – even for those with good medical insurance. It is not uncommon, as a matter of fact, for those who visit the emergency room to be left with a bill of at least $1,000, if not even more than that.
And, of course, one of the main reasons to go to urgent care centers is due to the fact that they can provide a high quality of care. In fact, this quality of care is so high that less than even 5% of all patients seen in the typical urgent care setting will ever need to be transferred to an emergency room. Conversely, however, up to 65% of all ER cases could have easily been provided with the emergency care that they needed at the typical urgent care location, something that would have saved them time and money, as are the reasons to go to urgent care centers and not the emergency room whenever it is possible.
Some people might be a bit skeptical of this, but the convenient medical treatment that an urgent care center can provide is most certainly one of the main reasons to go to urgent care instead of another location for medical treatment. The research that has been conducted on the subject more than backs this up, as it shows that up to 80% of all urgent care locations throughout the country can actually provide treatment for fractures. In addition to this, up to 70% of all urgent care locations – very nearly a full three quarters of them – can also provide IV fluids, should this be deemed to be necessary for any given patient.
Of course, urgent care centers can provide a wide variety of other medical care as well. Infections like ear infections and urinary tract infections (UTIs) are quite commonplace among the general population of the United States. Fortunately, they are quite easy to diagnose with a number of simple tests and sometimes even just a basic examination, such as is the case for ear infections. A round of antibiotics will most always clear up such infections, and can easily be prescribed by any one of the 20,000 doctors and medical professionals who have decided to work in the urgent care setting.
At the end of the day, there are many reasons that people should consider urgent care locations over their local emergency room. They’ll certainly save a lot of money, but they’ll also likely save a good deal of time as well. And, above all else, they will still be able to receive comprehensive and thorough medical care from skilled and trustworthy doctors and other such medical professionals such as nurses.