Going to an urgent care center has become a more and more viable option in the years since 2000, when urgent care clinics first came into being. For one thing, there are now more than 20,000 local doctors working at the more than 7,000 urgent care locations that can be found all throughout the country. For many people, this has made the average medical walk in clinic more highly accessible than ever before.
And the care offered at these walk in clinics is really quite high. Consider care for injuries such as sports injuries. After all, wound repair is actually the most commonly performed procedure in the average urgent care location (with respiratory illnesses and infections coming in as the most commonly diagnosed sickness). In addition to this, the treatment of varying levels of ankle sprains is also hugely common, given that up to 25,000 ankle sprain cases are seen throughout the course of just one day. And more than three quarters of all urgent care locations (around 80% of them, to be just a bit more exact) are able to even provide fracture care, something that can save the fracture patients in mind a great deal of time and money alike, as it keeps them from needing emergency room care.
Various other injuries can also be assessed and treated. Sunburns provide just one good example of such, though many people might not actively realize this to be the case. After all, sunburns are commonplace – almost anyone of fair skin (and even many who do not have fair skin) have suffered at least one sunburn over the course of their life. For many, sunburns are run of the mill, uncomfortable but not overly painful. After all, you can begin to get a sunburn in a shockingly short amount of time – after only just 15 minutes of sun exposure to skin that has not been protected from it. Unfortunately, however, it is possible to get a serious burn from the sun, and sometimes this burn will need medical attention. Fortunately, such medical help will more likely than not be able to be obtained from your local urgent care clinic.
The typical medical clinic will also provide testing in various forms. The DOT physical test and TB testing alike are commonplace in such walk in clinics. After all, something like TB testing is often even required before beginning a job. TB occurs in childhood, typically as a part of one’s course of routine vaccinations, but TB testing is also likely to be needed later on in life too. After all, TB exposure can happen without a person even realizing it, making TB testing a must. Fortunately, the results of most TB testing endeavors are negative, but TB testing is still hugely important for those few cases where the tests come back positive. Therefore, it is quite easy indeed to see why TB testing is legally mandated in many places wherever and whenever a new hire is made.
In addition to TB testing, DOT testing, and other forms of testing, various illnesses can also be handled in the typical urgent care location. After all, respiratory infections are the number one most diagnosed illness in urgent cares throughout the country, but there are many other illnesses that also are important. Urinary tract infections, for instance, are very prevalent as well. As a matter of fact, there will be well over eight million UTIs (as they are also known) diagnosed over the course of a single year, and that’s just here in the United States alone. In addition to this, the flu is commonly seen too, with up to one fifth of the population infected by the flu virus during a particularly bad flu season (and no less than 5% of the population impacted even during a good year).
At the end of the day, the urgent care center plays a hugely important role when it comes to providing medical care all throughout the United States. After all, more than 80% of all urgent care clinics are open each and every day of the week, making it a highly accessible form of medical care, to say the very least on the subject matter.
