When you’ve got a medical concern in the middle of the night, early in the morning, or during the weekend, emergency centers can seem like the obvious choice. After all, emergency centers in the United States provide around the clock care and, in addition to this, emergency centers are also obligated to accept just about anyone, regardless of whether or not they are insured. But emergency centers are far from perfect and there are actually a number of reasons that emergency centers should be avoided – unless, of course, you truly have a medical emergency.
For instance, emergency centers have incredibly long wait times that last, on average, fifty eight minutes, if not even more. If you have a less than urgent medical concern, you’ll likely be waiting for quite some time before even being seen by a nurse, let alone a doctor. Having tests performed and waiting on the results and having them discussed with you by a doctor will take up even more time.
And while emergency centers will take anyone, no matter what their health insurance status is, it’s also true that these emergency centers are incredibly expense. On average, you’ll almost certainly pay more than five hundred dollars for a simple visit. Many people, especially those who have had a number of diagnostic tests run, will even pay more than one thousand dollars, if not even more than that. Even those who have decent medical insurance often find that their insurance plan over covers a relatively small portion of the costs accrued at any given emergency center.
So what’s the alternative to emergency centers here in the United States? To put it simple – urgent care centers. Urgent care centers are becoming more prevalent than never before, with more than seven thousand urgent care locations spread out throughout the country. In fact, up to three million people will visit an urgent care center somewhere in the country over the course of just one week and urgent care centers now employ as many as twenty thousand doctors, a number that only continues to grow as time passes on.
And there are many reasons for urgent care centers to have grown in popularity. For instance, they tend to boast drastically reduced wait times in comparison to the vast majority of emergency centers in this country. In more than ninety percent of all urgent care centers throughout the country, the average wait time will not even exceed thirty minutes. And in more than half of all urgent care centers – in up to sixty percent of them – the average wait time won’t even surpass fifteen minutes, something that is truly impressive, to say the least.
Urgent care locations can also treat a wider array of medical conditions and concerns than most people realize as well, with up to eighty percent of these walk in clinics able to diagnose as well as treat a typical fracture with ease, providing comprehensive but convenient care all at once. In addition to this, up to seventy percent of urgent care locations can also provide IV fluids if they are to become necessary at any point in time, meaning that dehydrated people might just be able to avoid the emergency room, where costs for a mere IV would be likely to skyrocket.
In fact, less than five percent of all cases seen first in an urgent care location will need to be transferred to an emergency room location instead, proving that, the vast majority of the time, urgent care centers can provide the effective treatment that is needed. In addition to this, it has actually also been found that up to sixty five percent (and no less than forty five percent) of all cases seen in emergency centers throughout the country could have instead been easily treated in an urgent care center, something that would have saved the patients in question a good deal of time as well as money.
From urgent care for kids to urgent care for women, urgent care centers provide a viable and thriving alternative to the emergency centers that scatter the country. At urgent care centers, you’re likely to find just as comprehensive of a medical experience.
