Urgent Care Here In America
If you are a person here in the United States, it is likely that healthcare coverage has been or is becoming a problem for you, at least at some point in your life. For many people, finding the time and the money to go in and see a doctor is simply not something that they can easily fit into their schedules. And for those who simply do not have insurance at all, finding a doctor can be nearly impossible. Instead, such people often find themselves at their local emergency room, where it is mandated that everyone will receive treatment, insurance or not. However, they often end up waiting for hours to see a doctor and are given an extraordinarily high bill no matter how small their medical concern.
In many places throughout the United States, urgent care centers are providing a viable alternative. A common question about urgent care centers is, of course, how much is a urgent care visit. When we’re looking at how much is an urgent care center visit, we find that the answer to how much is a urgent care visit is one that will come as welcome news to many. In answer to this question of how much is a urgent care visit, it is unlikely that the average person will pay more than three hundred dollars, even if they, like too many Americans in this country, are uninsured. When we answer the question of how much is a urgent care visit, we must also ask how much is an emergency room visit. The answer to this is far less welcome, with the typical emergency room trip costing patients often well above one thousand dollars, a sum of money that takes many of them a great deal of time to be able to fully pay off.
Aside from asking how much is a urgent care visit, we must also ask about the wait times seen in such places. When you go to the typical emergency room, you can settle in for a long wait, sometimes up to an hour or more. In sixty percent of all urgent care centers, on the other hand, the average wait time is only about fifteen minutes and most patients are in and out of the urgent care location within the span of just one hour. On top of this, many urgent care centers are open every single day of the week (up to eighty five percent of them), meaning that they are able to provide patients in need with an alternative to the emergency room, as most typical doctor’s offices will be closed during the weekends without fail.
But aside from answering such questions as what time is an urgent care center open and how much is a urgent care visit, we must also discuss what urgent care centers can treat. The answer, to put it simply, is more than the average person would think. In fact, up to eight percent of all urgent care services will be able to provide fracture care, both diagnosing and treating fractures. And only about three percent of all urgent care cases must ultimately be sent to the hospital emergency room, while up to sixty five percent of all emergency room cases could have easily – and much less expensively – been treated in an urgent care location instead of the ER.
Of course, urgent care centers can also treat less urgent and more common medical concerns. The common cold, for one, can be diagnosed at an urgent care center. As there are more than one billion cases of this each and every year, urgent care centers are likely to see their fair share. The flu, which can impact and infect up to twenty percent of the population during any given flu season, is also commonly seen in urgent care locations. The flu, when caught in its early days, can be partially treated with an antiviral. While this will not get rid of the flu, it will decrease the severity and the duration of the flu in the vast majority of patients, preventing sometimes serious and even deadly complications from ever arising. Urgent care nearby can also be the best place for an ankle sprain, of which there are more than 25,000 of each day.
