What is urgent care? The advantage urgent care offers is a convenient option for avoiding the long wait of the emergency room or your primary doctor’s office without sacrificing treatment. The Urgent Care Association of America completed a study on these walk-in clinics and found that 57% of patients waited less than 15 minutes before seeing a physician. As many as 80% of patients were finished with their appointment within 60 minutes. Here’s what else you need to know about the advantage urgent care provides patients.
Don’t Wait to Be Seen: Choose Your Location, Not When to Seek Treatment.
All too often, patients will delay treatment because going to the doctor seems inconvenient. These patients are putting their health and well-being on the back burner, so to speak. Don’t be one of them. Urgent care clinics can offer convenient treatment for common ailments and illnesses.
Tell Me More About These Shorter Wait Times At Urgent Care Clinics.
An advantage urgent care can give is shorter wait times, as mentioned above. The convenience of these locations has to do with having physicians available. In fact, about 65% of urgent care facilities have an on-site physician present the whole day, and about 60% insist that their facility has an average wait time of less than 15 minutes.
Part of these shorter times does have to do with the supervision of a physician, but it can also be attributed to the opening hours. Many locations open before the typical hours of a doctor’s office. An advantage of urgent care centers is the ability of a patient to walk in before work at 7:00 a.m., or after dinner at 8:00 p.m. or later. In fact, about 66% of locations open before 9:00 a.m. during week days, while nearly 46% are open that early on Saturdays, and about 31% are open that early even on Sunday mornings.
What Can an Urgent Care Location Offer in Terms of Treatment?
An urgent care location cannot treat every ailment or injury. Most clinics are able to treat common health problems such as the cold, flu, sprains, and allergies. About four out of five are able to treat a fracture, and 70% can offer intravenous fluids to patients. This shows that patients should double check before going what type of care they will need, and if their chosen clinic offers that treatment.
In an urgent situation, it is better to have fewer decisions to make, not more. In this scenario then, it is best to be prepared and do one’s research beforehand. This means that you’ll want to have a list of appropriate urgent care clinics with phone numbers available before you or a family member is ill or injured. Doing so will make it easier to let the location know you are coming in, and to double check that they are both open and able to treat your ailment.
The advantage of urgent care is that it can streamline the process of treatment. No one enjoys heading in to the emergency room for a number of reasons. If your health issue doesn’t require complicated treatment but needs to be addressed soon, then urgent care is probably a better option. Why not save some time? Check out the urgent care locations in your area before your next health concern. You might just save some time later.
