What You Should Know About Your Local Urgent Care Center
When you’re looking into the types of medical care that are available to you, there are many options out there. For instance, you can go to see your general care practitioner. For wellness visits and the like, a general care practitioner is ideal. After all, forming a good relationship with your doctor is quite essential indeed when it comes to the overall care and keeping of your continued health.
Sometimes, however, going to see your GP is not always feasible. For one thing, you have to schedule an appointment and for a last minute visit it is likely that they will be quite fully booked up for the day. In addition to this, it is not uncommon for most doctor’s offices to be closed during the weekends and all major holidays (and even some of the more minor ones too, for that matter). For many people, going in for an urgent problem might not end up being a reality – and so they must then seek their medical care elsewhere.
The typical hospital emergency room is yet another center for such care. The average ER will be open all hours, day and night alike, and on all holidays as well. For major concerns, like strokes and heart attacks and life threatening injuries, the ER is the place to be. Even something such as a TB infection can be seen in the local ER. As a TB infection can be quite serious and life threatening in its own right, the ER might be your best bet for prompt and thorough care. If you suspect that you have something like a TB infection, getting treated right away is a must, as the typical TB infection can be quite contagious indeed.
But what if you do not have a TB infection or a gunshot wound or a heart attack? What if you’ve got a much more commonplace problem? Ankle sprains, for instance, happen as many as 25,000 times over the course of a single day all throughout the United States and a serious sunburn can begin to develop after even just fifteen minutes of unprotected sun exposure. For such cases that need treatment but that are not life threatening, going to the emergency room can just mean long wait times with an incredibly high bill at the end of things. But the typical doctor’s office, for the reasons discussed above, might also not be an option.
In such cases, a local medical clinic or urgent care center should be sought out. Fortunately, urgent care locations providing comprehensive medical care are growing all throughout the country, serving more people than ever before. Over the course of just one week, as a matter of fact, as many as three million people will be treated at these walk in clinics alone. And with as many as 20,000 doctors working at these urgent care locations, there is just no doubting the fact that the care given is quite high in quality – quite a bit higher than many people might first think before actually attending an urgent care location.
For instance, the average urgent care center will even be able to provide care for some of the more serious injuries out there. Backing up this claim is data that has shown that more than three quarters of all urgent care centers are able to both diagnose fractures as well as treat them. In addition to this, basic wound repair can be provided at many of the urgent care centers found all throughout the country as well.
At the end of the day, urgent care locations are hugely convenient as well. As a matter of fact, more than 80% of them are able to be open each and every day of the week, making them much more accessible and affordable than many other places where medical care can be received. In addition to this, some are even open, like an emergency room, around the clock.
Though if you have a suspected heart attack or TB infection the local emergency room is the place to be, high quality care for lesser issues can be provided at medical clinics all throughout the country.
