Urgent Care centers bridge the gap between doctor’s offices and emergency rooms by providing walk-in care for acute injuries or illnesses. If you’ve had a nonlife-threatening accident, you would normally visit an emergency room. Many symptoms and conditions lead you to the emergency room which has many disadvantages. In most cases, an urgent care center can handle you medial needs in the same way the emergency room or primary care physician would. Hospitals are busy and getting seen can be a long, painful process. Find a local urgent care center instead of the emergency room for injuries and symptoms that are not life-threatening.
Emergency Injuries and Illnesses
There are 7,357 urgent care centers in the United States and a physician, or a group of physicians, owns approximately 50% of urgent care centers and approximately one in five urgent care centers have more than 450 patient visits per week. Eighty-five percent of urgent care centers are open seven days a week; 70% can provide intravenous fluids when needed and 8% of urgent care centers provide fracture care. As urgent care centers continue to expand, they are treating many symptoms and conditions you see in emergency rooms and doctor’s offices.
Other urgent care services include:
- Primary care services
- Flu shots
- X-ray services
- Lab testing
- Drug testing
- Treatment for minor injuries
- Physicals
- Vaccinations
- wounds that require stitches
- broken bones
- sprains
- Fever
- ear infections
- asthma and other respiratory illnesses
- vomiting and diarrhea
- chronic health issues
- dehydration
Pediatric and Family Care
Urgent care service have expanded to handle the needs of your whole family. Every year, Americans get approximately 1 billion colds and the average child catches between six and 10 colds a year. Data from the 2014 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) revealed that 8.4% of U.S. children also suffered from hay fever, from respiratory allergies, from food allergies, and skin allergies. If your child has gotten sick, or needs vaccines to avoid sickness, consider urgent care services in lew of your primary doctor.
Pediatric urgent care services can also include:
According to the CDC, just under half of all adult ER patients were who were not admitted to the hospital sought treatment at the ER because their physicians’ offices were closed. Some urgent care services require your medical records from you primary physicians records. Many urgent care centers can obtain and handle your medical records and prescriptions like your doctor would. Approximately 40% of urgent care centers use electronic prescription ordering systems, with substantially larger proportions using computerized systems for viewing lab and imaging results, collecting patient demographics, billing, condition and procedure coding, and clinical notes.
Urgent Care Services include a variety of treatments for many illnesses and injuries. Visiting an urgent care center near you can save you time and money while ensuring the health of your entire family.
