Has your kid got a high fever or a bad case of the flu? Have you come down with a bizarre rash or bladder infection? Are you rushing a friend to the hospital because of a broken bone or fracture? Did you know that the emergency room isn’t the only place you can go for such things? While it’s always good to know the emergency room phone number nearest to you, urgent care centers can also help take care or treat all of these ailments. If you just need a vaccine, blood work done, or a routine check-up or physical, urgent care and walk in clinics can do these things too. No need to whip out the emergency room phone number or try to cram into an appointment at your doctor’s office! An urgent care center might have been quite close to you all along and you never realized it as a resource you could be (and should be) taking advantage.
What Can I Get Done at an Urgent Care Clinic?
If you’re suffering from an injury or illness that needs immediate attention, but isn’t life-threatening, you should head to an urgent care center instead of the emergency room. The emergency room is often overcrowded, with long waits, and can often be an expensive visit, despite assistance from insurance. With an urgent care clinic, your chances of being seen to quicker are increased and an urgent care clinic visit is much more cost effective than an emergency room visit. A licensed physician is always on hand to act as the medical director and the physicians are held to a strict set of criteria as set out by the Urgent Care Association of America and the American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine.
Urgent care physicians can take care of anything as minor as cuts, scrapes, sprains, strains, minor fractures, broken bones and rashes to things more serious like urinary tract infections, allergic reactions, strep throat, pink eye, and abscesses or boils. They can also carry out immunizations and vaccines. Many urgent care centers will offer STD or HIV screening, as well as screening for cholesterol, diabetes, and thyroid. If your child needs a physical for school or sports, those can also be done at urgent care centers.
What’s The Need?
It’s estimated that by 2030, three-fifths of Baby Boomers will have a chronic condition that they need to manage. The Urgent Care Association of America says that around three million patients visit them weekly and there are around 20,000 physicians who practice urgent care medicine currently.
Given that small things — like the 25,000 Americans who suffer from an ankle sprain daily or the dizziness that affects at least 70% of the nation’s population at some point in their lives — there’s plenty of need for urgent care centers. Emergency rooms can only take on so many people, after all. Almost 70% of Americans say that low back pain tends to affect their day-to-day routine, and at some point, they might need to visit an urgent care center to help them manage the pain.
Why Are Urgent Care Centers So Important?
For one thing, 85% of urgent care centers are open every day of the week and many have extended hours, to accommodate emergencies. They help keep emergency rooms from being too full — put that emergency room phone number down! — and offer important services to the general populace at a lower rate. While an upper respiratory condition or high fever might not be life-threatening, it can certainly be worrying to many people, and getting taken care of in a quick and timely manner, instead of sitting for hours in an emergency room, is often such a relief, and one that an urgent care center offers. They’re an important resource in many communities and one that are often not taken advantage of as often as they should be.
Next time you’re tempted to reach for the emergency room phone number, look up where the nearest urgent care to you is instead. You’ll get your needs taken care of and can skip the expensive price tag to boot!