If you’re looking for convenient and effective medical care here in the United States, consider an urgent care clinic near you. Urgent care clinics have grown immensely in popularity over the course of the last few years, and now serve as many as three million patients over the course of just one single year. In addition to this, they employ many a reputable doctor as well, with up to 20,000 of them found at urgent care locations all throughout the country – a number that is only likely to continue to keep growing in the years that are to come.
But why attend an urgent care center over your typical doctor’s office? For one thing, urgent care centers are open more frequently than the average family medical office, which is likely to be closed during weekends, holidays, and after certain hours in the evenings. Not only do walk in medical clinic stay open later into the day than the traditional doctor’s office will, but up to 85% of them are actually still open every single day of the week as well, making them ideal for medical concerns that arise during the weekends, later into the evening, and even earlier in the morning.
Urgent care centers also provide a viable alternative to emergency room care (though serious medical emergencies should of course go directly to the nearest emergency room location). After all, the typical urgent care center is going to have a drastically reduced wait time – and total cost – than the average emergency room location. In addition to this, urgent care centers can often deal with more complex medical cases than many people actually realize.
For instance, urgent care centers can deal with fracture cases more often than not, with up to 80% of them fully equipped with the tools and the medical expertise to do so. In addition to this, up to 70% of all such medical facilities here in the United States are also able to provide IV fluids, which can save a dehydrated person from having to spend what is often an exorbitant amount of money at their local hospital. With as many as 25,000 people in this country alone sustaining an angel sprain on a daily basis, ankle sprains are commonly seen and treated at many a medical clinic as well, as most walk in clinics will have the necessary supplies to deal with even the most severe of sprains possible.
You can even go to a local urgent care clinic for preventative medical care as well. This can be seen in a number of different ways. For instance, going to an urgent care location to get a flu shot can be a great way to stay as healthy as is possible all throughout flu season. During a particularly bad flu season, the flu can infect as much as 20% of the entire American population, but even during a less severe season, up to 5% of the population is still likely to become infected. For many people, getting a flu shot is essential for protection, especially for susceptible populations like young children and the elderly, as well as those with compromised immune systems in some way.
In addition to this, some urgent care locations can even provide routine vaccinations for children. Though it is likely ideal to have these vaccines administered by a pediatrician that you can see on a regular basis, urgent care centers can provide access to such critical medical treatments for those who maybe are not able to go in and see a pediatrician as regularly as they would like – if at all. And there is no doubt about it that getting these vaccinations for your children is a must, as it will protect them from a wide variety of diseases that were once quite deadly for children all throughout the country and in the world as a whole.
At the end of the day, the importance of urgent care centers cannot be underestimated. Urgent care centers provide vital medical services to communities all throughout the country, allow more people than ever to get much needed medical care.
