Behind The Growing Need For Urgent Care Clinics in The United States

Here in the United States, there are many different reasons to visit an urgent care clinic. For many people, an urgent care facility provides a viable alternative to medical treatment that can’t really be found in any other setting, and to visit an urgent care clinic is to be able to avoid high fees, such a those that you would see at the typical emergency room location. In addition to this, more people are choosing to visit and urgent care clinic than ever before, all throughout the United States.

In fact, it’s estimated that as many as three million people are treated by urgent care doctors after they decide to visit an urgent care clinic for each and every week that passes by. In addition to this, as many as twenty thousand credible and accredited doctors now work at urgent care locations all throughout the country, making urgent care locations and the typical walk in clinic more viable as a medical option than it has ever been before.

If you choose to visit an urgent care clinic, you’ll also likely be in and out with relative ease and speed, due to the fact that more than ninety percent (ninety two percent, to be a little more exact) of all urgent care clinics are actually able to keep their average wait time at no higher than thirty minutes, a mere half of an hour. In addition to this, up to sixty percent of all medical clinics are even able to reduce their average wait time to as little as fifteen minutes. The typical patient who chooses to visit an urgent care clinic is not likely to spend more than an hour total at any given medical clinic location.

Unfortunately, if you choose to go to your local emergency room instead you are likely to end up having a very different experience when all is said and done. The typical emergency location here in the United States is likely to have an excessively long wait time, sometimes as long as fifty eight minutes (on average) and sometimes even longer than that. No matter where you go, it’s likely that you’ll have a better experience if you choose to visit an urgent care clinic near you than if you choose to visit your local hospital.

And many people are hesitant to visit an urgent care clinic simply because they believe that such medical clinics are not currently equipped to treat a wide variety of medical conditions. However, this could not be further from the truth. In reality, urgent care clinics can treat pretty much anything a hospital could, barring serious emergencies, of course, and it’s been found that only around three percent of all cases seen in urgent care locations must ultimately be transferred to an emergency room. Conversely, however, it has been discovered that up to sixty five percent of cases that are seen in your typical emergency room could have been instead treated treated with a visit to the local urgent care clinic.

For instance, it has been found recently that up to eighty percent of all urgent care locations are even able to diagnose and treat fractures, a relatively severe injury that many people would think would very much necessitate a trip to the emergency room. In addition to this, urgent care centers can also provide IV fluids as much as seventy percent of the time. For someone who has become very much dehydrated but who is looking to avoid a trip to the hospital (and the costs and wait times that are associated with it), this access to IV fluids in their local urgent care facility is likely to be nothing if not ideal.

More common conditions can also be treated in the urgent care center as well, such as the flu (which can impact up to twenty percent of the population here in the United States during just about any given flu season). Urgent care locations are even likely to be able to provide preventative treatments as well, such as the flu shot, which can reduce the severity of the flu even if you do still end up contracting it.