Most people between the ages of 22 and 35 have used an urgent care facility at some point. Young adults are more likely to use an urgent care, opposed to waiting for an appointment with their primary physician because they are busy with work and life. They do not have the time or resources to wait for an appointment during regular business hours that would involve them having to take time off work.
Additionally, doctors’ offices often involve waiting. If you have an appointment at 10:30, you might not even get called back until 11:15 only to wait in the examine room for another 30 minutes until the doctor arrives. Now, instead of taking an hour off work, you’ve had to take half a day off work. For those working for an hourly wage, this is not ideal or even possible for many.
One of the many benefits of the urgent care is that there is no appointment needed. If you are sick, you do not have to call and hope you can get an appointment in under a week. You can see a doctor when you are sick. Also, urgent care facilities are open during non-business hours. This provides more flexibility for those that do not want to or cannot take time off work just to go to the doctor.
Urgent cares also provide a reasonable alternative to going to the emergency room. Often times when someone is injured, they may feel the need to go to a doctor, but they don’t want the expense or the wasted time that is often involved in going to the emergency room. For that reason, 80% of all urgent care facilities offer fracture care.
From colds to poison ivy reaction, urgent care centers offer a reasonable alternative to waiting for an appointment or for going to the emergency room. Each day nearly 25,000 people will sprain their ankle. Roughly 20% of the population will get the flu or experience flu-like symptoms. Over eight million people will go to the doctor for a urinary tract infection. These are all ailments and injuries that can be safely and quickly treated through an urgent care.
Urgent cares are also ideal for young parents, who may be unsure if their child needs to go to the doctor or the hospital. It allows parents to take their child to a doctor without missing school, and it provides the peace of mind that parents want when they are worried about their child. Emergency rooms can be expensive, hectic, and involve long wait times. Urgent care centers are typically faster and less expensive than emergency rooms.
Many states are changing their laws regarding student attendance at school, which makes it even more difficult to set doctor’s appointments for school age children. Schedule sports physicals, vaccinations, and other routine checkups becomes a pain when trying to juggle multiple children with different schedules, plus a job, and school commitments.
Having an option that provides after hours appointments allows parents to get in all the needed appointments. It also allows them to take their children to see a doctor right when something happens or the parent decides the child is sick enough to be taken to a doctor. Parents often feel stuck waiting until morning when their child is ill during the evening hours, so they can call to see if they can get an appointment with the child’s physician.
It is not uncommon for people to have to wait days if not weeks to get in to see a doctor due to the limited options and high number of patients. The more patients a doctor is treating, the less available they will be for last-minute appointments. This makes it difficult to actually see the doctor when you or your child is still sick. Plus, for many illnesses, the faster the patient is put on antibiotics, the faster the illness is contained. When that does not happen, the rest of the family is more likely to get sick with the same illness.
