If you’re looking for medical care during a period when your doctor’s office is closed, you might think of going to a local emergency room. The emergency room number is one that many a person has called, as an emergency room number can provide information about any given emergency room availability. If you have a less than urgent medical concern, calling the emergency room number before going in can give you a better idea of wait times in any given emergency room setting.
After calling an emergency room number, you might even find that you no longer want to go to the emergency room. After all, calling this emergency room number is likely to show you that your local emergency room has a long wait time. On average, you’ll likely have to wait around an hour before being seen by a medical professional and even longer after being assigned an emergency room number (not a phone number this time, but an emergency room number with your own bed and space to wait for the doctor and treatment). For many people, this entire process ends up being very expensive as well, costing more than $1,000 on average. For some – for more than you might think – such costs can even begin snowballing medical debt.
So instead of calling your emergency room number, consider visiting the top doctors at an urgent care facility. Urgent care centers have become more and more common all throughout the United States, treating more than 85 million people over the course of just one year. This means that as many as three million people will be treated in an urgent care clinic over the course of just one week. And there are many reasons to go to an urgent care location instead of calling your local emergency room number (unless you are truly facing a potentially life threatening medical issue like a serious injury, potential stroke, or potential heart attack.
For one thing, urgent care locations are more likely to be open than your average doctor’s office, meaning that they are a viable alternative to medical care. As a matter of fact, up to 85% of all urgent care centers boast hours each and every day of the week. And, unlike in your typical emergency room, you’ll be able to get in and be seen relatively quickly. More than 90% of all urgent care locations do not have average waiting times that are longer than even just half of an hour. In addition to this, nearly three quarters of all urgent care clinics have wait times of no more than 20 minutes, at least on average. And around 60% of all urgent cares have average wait times of only just a mere 15 minutes, hardly any time at all. Therefore, it is common for patients to get in and out all within the span of just one single hour.
Aside from convenience, urgent care treatment is high in quality as well. For instance, you can even go to a local walk in medical clinic for a minor fracture. This is thanks to the fact that more than three quarters (around 80%, as a matter of fact) of all walk in health clinics can both diagnose and treat minor fractures. Because of this care, many people have saved a good deal of time and money alike by avoiding their local emergency room, something that certainly should not be discounted in any way. Ultimately, only around 3% of all cases first seen in a walk in clinic will ever need to be transferred from the urgent care center in question to the nearest hospital. Conversely, however, it has been found that as many as 60% of all emergency room cases (and no less than 40% of them at the very least) could have instead been treated well and with thoroughness at the nearest urgent care location. Therefore, it is clear to see that urgent cares play an important role in the world as we know it – a role that is only growing as time continues to pass on.
All in all, checking out your local urgent care center is something that is likely to benefit you quite considerably, as it provides access to care.
