Do you find yourself constantly getting sick every year during flu season? Are you accident prone, always getting new bumps and bruises? Do you suffer from everyday aliments like back pain and coughs and fevers?
If you said yes and you’re trying to figure out what your options are when it comes to healthcare services, it can be tricky. You’ve got the ER and you’ve got primary care, but you might not be in the mood for a long wait time. What the heck do you do then?
The answer is simple: for your healthcare needs, visit an urgent care clinic. An urgent care is a type of walk-in clinic where you can go to treat non-life-threatening ailments and where you can receive healthcare treatment faster. Millions of people visit urgent cares every week and the average facility sees about 50 people a day.
Now you might be thinking that an urgent care can’t help you with the problem you have. Think again. The list of symptoms that an urgent care facility can treat continues to grow by the year. As it stands, the average urgent care facility can treat people for ear infections, sexually transmitted diseases, muscle strain, common sports injuries, sprains, dizziness and many other things.
Some of them might vary in the services they offer, but when it comes to healthcare, urgent care facilities offer is a quicker and more cost-effective way to treat a number of common, everyday medical ailments, saving you a lot of time, stress and money.
Still not convinced? Consider these statistics:
- Americans suffer from about a billion colds annually.
- Somewhere between 5-20% of Americans suffer from the flu every year.
- Dizziness is the second most common complaint heard in doctor’s offices and it occurs in 70% of the American population.
- 65% of people older than 60 experience dizziness or loss of balance, sometimes daily.
- More than 80% of Americans are allergic to poison ivy and it can be found everywhere in the United States except Alaska and Hawaii.
- At least 40% of those suffering from chronic low-back pain don’t see a doctor or physical therapist.
- Approximately 25,000 Americans suffer every day from an ankle sprain.
- Up to 69% of Americans say low back pain affects them on a daily basis.
Visiting an urgent care can help treat all of these symptoms and a lot more. Plus, you’ll be able to see a doctor much faster than you would if you went to the emergency room. More than half of urgent care facilities have a wait time of less than 15 minutes and most of them have a physician on site at all times to treat patients. Additionally, urgent care centers stay open longer. Depending on where you live, you may find urgent cares that open prior to 9 a.m., close after 7 p.m. and are even open on weekends.
When it comes to healthcare, there’s no doubt urgent care helps a lot of people. A 2016 survey found that 75% of urgent care patients indicated the care they received at an urgent care, was excellent or good; that means three out of four people who visit an urgent care are satisfied and happy with the healthcare they receive. As if that wasn’t enough, nearly everyone who visits an urgent care for healthcare is exactly where they need to be; studies have shown that 97% of urgent care visitors can be treated there, with only 3% diverted to an emergency room.
If you’ve got a life-threatening issue, please do what’s best for your health and visit the emergency room. The last thing you want to do is play chicken with a serious health problem just to save money or time. Emergency room doctors play an important role in medical care and if you’re suffering from a severe injury or something like food poisoning (something near 50 million Americans experience each year), they’re the ones to see.
But for non life-threatening injuries and common, easily-treatment symptoms and conditions, an urgent care facility can save you time and money while offering you treatment for a wide variety of things.
