The Case For Urgent Care Centers In The United States


 

From lab services to wound repair, urgent care services all throughout the country provide a much broader array of services than most people realize. In fact, urgent care centers all throughout the United States are often the ideal place to go when you have a medical concern, a better choice than the local emergency room or even your primary care physician. This article will take a look at the reasons you should go to such an urgent care location, as well as what you can have treated there – and what should still be seen in the emergency room.

First, it’s important to discuss the fact that most urgent care centers can handle the vast majority of cases that they see with no outside intervention. In fact, data more than backs this up, showing that only around three percent or so of cases seen by your typical walk in clinic must be sent to the emergency room. On the other hand, however, as many as sixty five percent of cases seen by a local emergency room could have been thoroughly treated by your local urgent care location instead.

But why go to urgent care instead of the emergency room? For one, it’s incredibly efficient, much more so than an ER will ever be. While emergency rooms throughout the country have average wait times often reaching or even exceeding an hour, up to sixty percent of all urgent care locations have average wait times of only just fifteen minutes. By the time that an entire hour has elapsed, the typical urgent care patient is usually already on their way out the door, having been seen by a doctor and having received the medical treatment that they were in need of.

If you are injured or sick, consider going to an urgent care. After all, it is more likely than not that your local urgent care will be more than adept at treating all of your medical needs, as up to eighty percent of urgent care locations are even able to provide fracture care, such as x-rays and would repair services after a diagnosis has been officially made. Sprains, of which there are up to twenty five thousand of in just one day here in the United States, can also be treated, as can other injuries like wounds that are in need of stitches.

If you are sick, it is likely that your local urgent care center will be able to provide lab services. Lab services can test for a wide variety of conditions and infections, from the flu to the common UTI. Lab services can also test for strep throat, a disease that makes up as much as ten percent of the yearly diagnoses of sick adults here in the United States. And getting diseases like strep throat diagnosed through the use of lab services is a very important thing, as strep throat is highly contagious. Once someone has been diagnosed with strep throat, they will likely be asked to isolate and quarantine themselves for a full day, up to twenty four hours, in order to halt the spread of the disease as much as is possible without knowing how many people they have already been exposed to prior to their diagnosis.

Of course, less severe illnesses can also be looked at in any given urgent care location, even without the use of lab services. The common cold, for instance, is incredibly common, with as many as one billion cases during any typical cold and flu season. Of course, children get many common colds – up to six to ten in just one year – and an important part of ensuring their health can sometimes be taking them to a doctor to ensure that their cold is not anything more severe. The lab services at your local urgent care can be used to definitively rule out any more severe condition.

Urgent care centers provide accessible medical care to those who are in need of it, from lab services to wound repair to a simple medical consultation. Because urgent care centers are quick and inexpensive, it is unlikely that many will be able to find a better option for minor ailments.

Leave a Reply