If you’re wondering what is considered urgent care, you are certainly not alone. For many people wondering what is considered urgent care, medical treatment from urgent care locations is something of a mystery. Fortunately, however, what is considered urgent care treatment can range quite dramatically, from the most minor of medical concerns to the much more serious ones. In this way, many people to find the answer to what is considered urgent care to be much more diverse than they realized.
After all, it has been found that up to 80% of all urgent care locations in this country can provide diagnosis and treatment for fractures, as long as they are not too severe. In addition to this, the typical urgent care center will also easily be able to treat ankle sprains. This is quite a good thing, as ankle sprains are, after all, quite common, with at least 25,000 of them happening over the course just one single day here in the United States alone, let alone elsewhere throughout the world.
If you’re wondering what is considered urgent care, you’re likely to find a wide variety of treatments for illnesses as well. Pediatric urgent care nearby is likely to be found in your neighborhood, with many a urgent care center providing comprehensive care for children as well. After all, as any parent can attest to, children (especially young ones) are prone to injury and illness alike. In fact, the typical child is likely to get anywhere from six colds to ten colds over the span of just one single year, far more than the typical healthy adult (though even the healthiest of parents to sick children are likely to pick up their child’s illness at least once throughout flu and cold season).
Ear infections are also very common among young children, and very much fall into the category of what is considered urgent care treatment. In fact, more than 80% of kids will have had at least one single ear infection by the time that they reach their third birthday – and nearly half of all kids (up to 40% of them, to be just a little bit more precise) will have had at least three ear infections, if not more, by this same age. Fortunately, the majority of ear infections seen in children can be treated by antibiotics by relative ease – but if your child has recurrent ear infections, it might be time to visit and ENT specialist (ear, nose, and throat for the uninitiated).
But why go to an urgent care center instead of your typical doctor’s office or even the emergency room, even if the answer to the question of what is considered urgent care is far more vast than most people initially realize? For one thing, urgent care centers are open later into the night and earlier in the morning than your typical doctor’s office, with up to 85% of all urgent care locations open every single day of the week, making it easy to get yourself or your child medical treatment on a weekend or later in the evening than you would at a local doctor’s office.
In this way, urgent care centers can provide a viable alternative to the emergency room, which many people have long viewed as the only way to get after hours medical care. But the emergency room is far from ideal, costing a good amount of money (at least $500, if not significantly more, for even the most minor of visits) and is far from efficient. In fact, the typical wait in any given emergency room can be as much as an hour long if not even more than that. For the average person, going to an urgent care location can be a much better solution.
Wait times at the typical urgent care center, after all, are only about half an hour long. In more than half of all urgent care locations, wait times are as short as a mere 15 minutes. And the typical patient is able to get in and out over the course of one hour.